SANTA  BARBARA  STATE 


LITERATURE  IN  THE  ELEMENTARY 
SCHOOL 


THE  UNIVERSITY  OF  CHICAGO  PRESS 
CHICAGO.  ILLINOIS 


THE  BAKER  &  TAYLOR  COMPANY 

BCW  TORI 

THE  CAMBRIDGE  UNIVERSITY  PRESS 

LONDON  AND  KDINBURBH 

THE  MARUZEN-KABUSHIKI-KAISHA 

TOEIO,  OSAKA,    KYOTO,  TUKCOIA,  8ENDAI 

THE  MISSION  BOOK  COMPANY 


LITERATURE  IN  THE 
ELEMENTARY  SCHOOL 


BY 

PORTER  LANDER  MAcCLINTOCK,  A.M. 


THE  UNIVERSITY  OF  CHICAGO  PRESS 
CHICAGO,  ILLINOIS 


COPYRIGHT  1907  BY 
THE  UNIVERSITY  OF  CHICAGO 


All  Rights  Reserved 


Published  November  1907 

Second  Impression  October  1908 

Third  Impression  September  1009 

Fourth  Impression  November  1910 

Fifth  Impression  March  1912 

Sixth  Impression  October  1913 

Seventh  Impression  November  1914 

Eighth  Impression  October  1915 

Ninth  Impression  July  1916 

Tenth  Impression  April  1917 

Eleventh  Impression  August  1918 

Twelfth  Impression  July  1919 


Composed  and  Printed  By 

The  University  of  Chicago  Press 

Chicago,  Illinois.  U.S.A. 


LB    , 
1573 


(Ifil  SCHUlil 

MANUAL  I  HOME  ECGNOWtfU 

SANTA  BAS3ARA,  CALIFORNIA 


TO  W.  D.  M. 

TO  A.  C.  D. 

AND 

TO  MY  DEAR  FRIENDS  AND  FELLOW-STUDENTS 
LANDER 
PAUL 
HILDA 
ELIZABETH 
HERMANN 

JOSEPHINE 
ISABEL 
BETH 
ALBERT 
IRENE 
HENRY 
RUTH 

THIS  LITTLE  BOOK,  THE  OUTCOME  OF  OUR  COMMON  STUDIES, 
IS  MOST  LOYALLY  AND  LOVINGLY  DEDICATED 


PREFACE 

This  book  had  its  origin  in  several  years  of 
experience  and  experiment  in  teaching  classes 
in  literature  in  the  Laboratory  School  of  the 
University  of  Chicago,  when  that  fruitful 
venture  in  education  was  being  conducted  by 
Professor  John  Dewey;  in  many  years  of  pri- 
vate reading  with  children ;  and  in  many  years 
of  lecturing  to  teachers  of  children.  Indeed,  all 
the  material  bears  the  unconcealable  marks  of  its 
origin  as  lectures,  it  being  extremely  difficult  to 
turn  into  decorous  chapters  in  a  book,  stuff  which 
first  took  shape  as  spontaneous  and  informal 
lectures. 

The  central  matter  of  the  book  was  pub- 
lished as  a  series  of  articles  in  the  Elementary 
School  Teacher  of  October,  November,  and  De- 
cember, 1902,  and  a  synopsis  of  the  whole  book 
was  printed  and  widely  circulated  in  January, 
1904.  These  facts  may  partially  account  for  a 
certain  familiarity  that  many  readers  will  per- 
ceive. May  I  venture  to  hope  that  this  sense  of 
familiarity  may  also  be  partly  accounted  for  by 
the  fact  that  the  views  expressed  are  consb- 
vii 


viii  Preface 

nant  with  those  arrived  at  independently  by  many 
recent  students  of  literature  and  of  children? 

Were  it  not  a  matter  of  mere  justice,  this 
would  be  scarcely  the  place  to  mention  my  debt 
of  many  kinds  to  Professor  W.  D.  MacClintock 
of  the  University  of  Chicago;  the  incalculable 
value  of  Professor  Dewey's  influence  and  sym- 
pathy; and  the  unforgettable  stimulation  of  Mrs. 
Dewey's  criticism.  Neither  is  it  more  than 
justice  to  express  my  gratitude  for  the  patience 
of  my  publishers,  which  has  endured  both  much 
and  long. 

P.L.M. 

UNIVERSITY  OF  CHICAGO 
June,  1907 


TABLE  OF  CONTENTS 

CHAPTER  PAGX 

I.  LITERATURE  IN  THE  ELEMENTARY  SCHOOL  i 

II.  THE  SERVICES  WE  MAY  EXPECT  LITERA- 
/  TURE  TO  RENDER  IN  THE  EDUCATION  OF 

CHILDREN      .     .     ~'~.     .     .          .     .  16 

III.  THE   KINDS   OF   LITERATURE  AND  THE 
ELEMENTS  OF  LITERATURE  SERVICEABLE 

IN  THE  ELEMENTARY  SCHOOL       ...  38 

IV.  STORY 55 

V.  THE  CHOICE  OF  STORIES 77 

VI.  FOLK-TALE  AND  FAIRY-STORY       ...  92 

VII.  MYTH  AS  LITERATURE    .     .     .    ,.  .  »    ^  113 

VHI.  HERO-TALES  AND  ROMANCES    ....  131 

IX.  REALISTIC  STORIES    .     .     .....  156 

X.  NATURE  AND  ANIMAL  STORIES       .     .     .  170 

XI.  SYMBOLISTIC  STORIES,  FABLES,  AND  OTHER 

APOLOGUES 183 

XII.  POETRY ,  -  .     .  193 

XIII.  DRAMA      .     .     .     .-  .     /  .     .     . .   *  212 

XIV.  THE  PRESENTATION  OF  THE  LITERATURE  229 
XV.  THE  RETURN  FROM  THE  CHILDREN    .     .  242 

XVI.  THE  CORRELATIONS  OF  LITERATURE  .     .  259 

XVII.  LITERATURE  our  OF  SCHOOL  AND  READ- 
ING OTHER  THAN  LITERATURE       .     .     .  277 

XVIII.  A  COURSE  IN  LITERATURE  FOR  THE  ELE- 
MENTARY SCHOOL 292 


CHAPTER  I    _ 

LITERATURE  IN  THE  ELEMENTARY  SCHOOL 

According  to  the  naively  formal  method  of 
division  of  the  old-fashioned  homiletics,  the  title 
itself  offers  a  quite  inevitable  outline  for  the  dis- 
cussion in  this  chapter — an  outline  that  takes  this 
form:  (i)  literature;  (2)  literature  in  the 
school;  (3)  literature  in  the  elementary  school; 
and  while  we  may  smile  at  the  pat  formality  of 
the  little  syllabus,  we  cannot  resist  its  logic.  Per- 
haps we  can  retain  the  logic  while  we  disguise 
the  formality. 

When  one  proposes  to  enter  for  any  purpose 
or  from  any  point  of  view,  a  large  field,  especially 
a  field  that  has  already  been  much  explored,  he 
feels  that  he  must  hasten  to  define  his  bounds, 
to  stake  out  his  particular  claim.  But  he  makes 
a  mistake  if,  in  his  haste  to  do  this,  he  fails  to 
make  clear  his  understanding  of  the  location  of 
the  large  field  and  his  conception  of  its  nature. 
Any  new  discussion  of  literature  must  justify 
itself  at  the  beginning  by  declaring  from  what 
point  of  view  it  will  proceed  and  in  what 
direction  it  will  move.  This  seems  a  good  place, 
then,  to  declare  that  this  whole  discussion  will 


2          Literature  in  tlie  Elementary  School 

concern  itself  with  literature  as  a  part  of  the  train- 
ing of  children.  Yet  this  discussion  must  con- 
stantly proceed  in  the  light  of  certain  funda- 
mental conclusions  concerning  literature  in  gen- 
eral, and  in  its  essential  nature,  and  it  will  help 
us  to  stand  upon  common  ground  to  state  these 
conclusions. 

Literature,  like  every  other  subject  that  would 
claim  a  place  as  a  discipline  in  school,  is  called 
upon  in  our  day  of  re-examination  and  re- 
adjustment of  the  curriculum  to  make  good  its 
claim  by  showing  that  it  has  in  its  nature  some- 
thing distinctive  by  virtue  of  which  it  performs 
in  the  child's  education  some  distinctive  ser- 
vice. It  is  true,  that  no  subject  of  human 
interest  is  a  quite  detached  island;  pursued  far 
enough,  its  edges  blur  and  mingle  with  the  edges 
of  neighboring  interests,  so  that  there  are  regions 
where  the  two  are  indistinguishable.  But  every 
body  of  material  has  a  characteristic  center  where 
it  declares  itself  unmistakably.  However  widely 
it  radiates  from  this  center,  however  many  or 
however  distant  areas  it  touches  and  mingles 
with  upon  its  borders,  in  this  center  it  is  itself 
and  nothing  else.  This  becomes  clear  when  we 
consider  some  of  the  larger  subjects  of  educa- 
tional discipline.  There  is,  for  example,  a  well- 
defined  subject,  geography,  though  if  one  pur- 


Literature  in  the  Elementary  School        3 

sues  it  far,  he  comes  in  one  direction  upon  geol- 
ogy; in  other  directions,  upon  history  or  eco- 
nomics or  sociology  or  politics.  Or  to  take  another 
group  of  subjects,  there  is  a  region  in  which  you 
are  dealing  with  anatomy,  though  on  the  edges 
of  it  you  pass  imperceptibly  into  physiology  or 
general  biology. 

For  several  reasons  it  is  especially  difficult  to 
fix  the  bounds  of  literature.  It  touches  the  mar- 
gins of  every  other  human  interest;  it  may  reach 
into  any  of  the  areas  about  it  for  subject-matter ; 
it  shares  with  all  other  subjects  its  means  of 
expression;  it  lends  to  all  other  subjects  certain 
of  its  methods  and  devices,  when  these  other 
subjects  must  be  presented  effectively;  its  very 
name  is  applied  loosely  and  half  figuratively  to 
writing  upon  any  subject,  and  for  whatever  pur- 
pose produced.  But  for  all  this,  literature,  too, 
has  its  distinctive  center,  where  it  can  be  differ- 
entiated from  everything  else. 

We  begin  to  make  this  differentiation  when  we 
say  that  literature  is  art — that  it  is  one  of  the  fine 
arts.  We  set  it  apart  from  the  other  arts  by  the 
fact  that  it  uses  language  as  its  medium,  and  we 
set  it  apart  from  other  writing  by  the  fact  that  it 
uses  language  in  the  way  art  must  use  it — not 
for  technical  purposes,  not  as  a  medium  for  teach- 
ing facts  or  doctrines,  not  to  give  information, 


™ 


4        Literature  in  the  Elementary  School 

but  to  produce  artistic  pleasure;  not  to  conserve 
use,  but  to  exhibit  aesthetic  beauty. 

When  one's  mind  is  clear  on  this  point,  he 
will  not  be  confused  by  the  fact  that  literature 
handles  matter  from  other  provinces — history 
for  example — or  by  the  fact  that  other  kinds  of 
writing  borrow  the  devices  of  literature  to 
beautify  or  otherwise  make  effective  their  own 
material.  When  Scott  takes  from  history 
the  figure  of  Richard  Coeur  de  Lion,  it  is  not  for 
the  purpose  of  teaching  historical  fact,  but  for 
the  sake  of  putting  into  his  picture  a  striking 
person  and  an  effective  motive.  When  Macaulay 
employs  many  figures  of  speech,  when  he  rounds 
out  his  periods  and  balances  them  carefully,  when 
he  uses  picturesque  concrete  and  particular  per- 
sons and  objects  rather  than  abstractions  and 
generalizations,  all  to  make  clear  and  vivid  the 
information  he  is  giving,  he  is  still  writing  his- 
tory and  not  literature,  since  he  is  aiming  first 
at  fact  and  not  first  at  beauty. 

This  recognition  of  literature  as  art,  and  the 
differentiation  of  it  from  the  other  kinds  of 
writing,  so  far  from  being  a  mere  bit  of  aesthetic 
theory  remote  from  the  teacher  and  his  child,  is 
the  fundamental  and  essential  step  in  the  teacher's 
procedure,  because  it  constitutes  at  once  a  clue 
to  lead  him  in  his  choice  of  material,  a  guide  to 


Literature  in  the  Elementary  School        5 

*_. 

direct  him  in  the  method  of  using  it,  and  a  stand- 
ard to  indicate  the  nature  of  the  result  he  may 
reasonably  hope  for.  When  the  teacher  knows 
that  he  is  to  choose  his  literature  as  art  he  is  freed 
from  the  obligation  of  selecting  such  things  as 
will  contain  technical  information,  historical 
facts,  desirable  moral  lessons,  or  other  utilitarian 
matter.  This  is  far  from  saying  that  in  choosing 
he  will  be  indifferent  to  the  actual  material  details 
or  to  the  moral  atmosphere  of  his  bit  of  literature. 
The  fitness  or  unfitness,  the  beauty  or  ugli- 
ness of  these  will  often  be  the  ground  of  his 
adoption  or  rejection.  It  does  mean,  however, 
that  technical  and  professional  details  of  fact  and 
teaching,  matters  which  are  always  subsidiary 
and  secondary  in  literature  as  literature,  cannot 
dictate  his  choice  when  he  is  choosing  from  the 
point  of  view  of  art. 

The  habit  of  regarding  literature  as  art  clari- 
fies immediately  the  teacher's  conception  of  his' 
method  of  handling  it.  To  teach  literature  as 
literature  is  not  to  teach  it  as  an  adjunct  to  some 
other  discipline;  it  is  not  to  teach  it  as  reading- 
lessons,  or  spelling-lessons,  nor  as  grammar — 
though  incidentally  the  lessons  in  literature  will 
have  great  value  in  all  these  directions;  it  is  not 
to  teach  it  as  botany,  as  history,  as  mythology, 
as  politics,  as  naval  or  military  tactics,  or  as 


6        Literature  in  the  Elementary  School 

ethics — though  again,  by  way  of  teaching  it  as 
literature,  interesting  by-products  in  any  of  these 
subjects  may  accrue. 

It  is  equally  true  that  a  clear  understanding 
of  the  fact  that  the  results  aimed  at  and  legiti- 
mately hoped  for  are  to  be  of  the  literary,  artistic 
kind,  and  not  of  the  utilitarian  or  scientific  kind, 
will  lighten  and  irradiate  the  teacher's  problem 
and  through  him  the  children's  task,  doing  away 
with  the  sense  of  burden  and  substituting  for  a 
vague  and  shifting  end,  a  definite  and  delightful 
purpose. 

To  take  a  specific  instance — it  is  very  little  to 
the  purpose  of  literature  to  have  taught  a 
class  that  Longfellow  was  an  American  poet 
who  lived  in  Cambridge,  Massachusetts;  and 
that,  though  the  myth  and  legend  of  Hiawatha 
properly  belong  to  the  Iroquois,  Longfellow 
transferred  it  to  the  Objibways.  So  far  as 
the  distinctively  literary  result  goes,  these  facts 
are  neither  here  nor  there.  But  the  enjoy- 
ment of  the  music  of  the  verse,  the  loving  appro- 
priation and  appreciation  of  some  of  the  beautiful 
images  and  pictures,  some  grasp  of  the  large 
meaning,  the  noble  trend,  of  the  whole  poem,  a 
general  tuning-up  of  the  class  to  something  like 
unison  with  its  emotion,  a  better  taste  in  the  whole 
class,  and  in  a  few  members  of  it  some  improve- 


Literature  in  the  Elementary  School        7 

ment  in  their  own  powers  of  expression — these 
are  the  kind  of  result  at  which  the  teacher  aims 
when  he  teaches  literature  as  art. 

The  question  of  literature  in  the  school  has 
taken  on  a  new  aspect  in  this  our  current  day, 
and  especially  in  American  schools,  owing  to  the 
decidedly  diminished  place  left  for  it  in  the 
modern  curriculum.  This  has  come  about  most 
naturally  in  the  vast  enrichment  of  the  course 
on  the  side  of  scientific  and  occupational  material. 
And  naturally,  too,  in  the  process  of  turning  from 
a  purely  book-education,  we  have  tended  to  turn 
also  from  literature — a  field  which  for  many 
generations  has  seemed  to  be  inextricably  shut  up 
in  books.  But  it  is  also  true  that,  in  a  large  part, 
this  turning-away  from  literature  has  been  from 
literature  wrongly  apprehended  and  mistakenly 
taught.  Whatever  be  the  explanation  of  the 
smaller  place  given  to  literature,  no  thoughtful 
student  of  modern  education,  no  matter  how 
firmly  he  believes  in  the  function  of  literature, 
can  regret  that  it  should  take  in  the  curriculum 
its  'due  and  proportionate  place.  Such  a  student 
knows  best  the  follies  and  absurdities  achieved 
by  untrained  and  inartistic  teachers,  in  whose 
hands  literature  is  made  the  center  to  which  they 
attach  any  and  all  other  matters  of  training; 
he  best  knows  the  fact  that  literature  leaves 


8        Literature  in  the  Elementary  School 

many  of  the  child's  powers  and  capacities  un- 
touched; he  best  knows  the  danger  of  over- 
stimulating  those  powers  and  capacities  that 
literature  does  develop  and  strengthen,  and  that 
it  is  a  misfortune  for  a  child  or  a  class  to  live  pre- 
vailingly in  an  atmosphere  distinctively  literary; 
and  he  knows  that  a  few  specimens  chosen  aright 
and  taught  aright  produce  the  essentially  literary 
result  more  surely  and  more  safely  than  such  a 
programme  as  could  once  be  seen  in  school — a 
programme  that  seemed  to  reflect  the  teacher's 
desire  to  give  the  children  within  the  grammar 
school  all  the  reading  that  they  ought  reasonably 
to  be  expected  to  have  up  to  maturity. 

The  choosing  of  literature  for  use  in  school 
creates  immediately  several  important  conditions. 
The  bit  chosen  is  elevated  at  once  into  the  dignity 
and  isolation  of  a  discipline,  and  is  set  apart 
from  matter  to  be  read  once  and  casually, 
for  recreation  or  amusement,  at  home  or  in 
hours  of  intellectual  play,  to  the  single  child 
or  a  small  group  of  homogeneous  children. 
In  view  of  the  fact  that  the  specimen  is  being 
chosen  for  use  in  class,  it  must  be  broad  and 
typical,  appealing,  as  it  were,  to  the  universal 
child.  It  must  not  be  merely  fanciful,  freakish, 
satirical,  or  witty,  because,  while  there  is  pretty 
sure  to  be  some  child  in  every  class  who  would 


Literature  in  the  Elementary  School      n 

of  reading  prepared  for  the  elementary  grades, 
and  examines  the  manuals  for  their  teachers, 
comes  near  concluding  that  the  larger  number  of 
mistakes,  and  the  mistakes  most  disastrous,  lie 
here — in  losing  sight  of  the  principle  of  fitness. 
For  in  these  formal  lists,  and  suggested  in  the 
manuals,  one  may  find,  first  and  last,  heaped  up 
all  that  various  teachers  have  themselves  happened 
to  like;  all  that  critics  have  praised;  all  whose 
titles  sound  as  if  they  ought  to  be  good;  all  that 
is  concerned  more  or  less  remotely  with  other 
things  the  children  are  studying;  all  that  a  gen- 
eration of  mistaken  educational  logic  has  sug- 
gested; all  that  a  mature  reader  ought  to  have 
read  in  a  life-time ;  all  that  a  blind  interpretation, 
both  of  childhood  and  of  literature,  has  called 
suitable — historical  works,  American  literature, 
Shakespeare's  comedies,  the  Idylls  of  the  King, 
sentimental  and  bloodthirsty  juveniles — a  chaotic 
and  accidental  jumble.  Out  of  some  such  hap- 
hazard impulse  and  some  such  failure  to  apply 
the  law  of  fitness  come  such  mistakes  as  the  intro- 
duction of  fifth-grade  children  into  the  mazes 
of  a  satiric  social  comedy  like  A  Midsummer- 
Night's  Dream,  or  the  placing  of  first-year  second- 
ary children  amid  the  bitter  jests  and  baffling 
irony  of  The  Vicar  of  Wake  field.  Such  peda- 
gogical misfits  arise  out  of  sheer  ignorance  of 


12      Literature  in  the  Elementary  School 

the  child's  nature  and  its  needs,  and  of  the 
plainest  principles  of  literary  interpretation. 
They  persist  year  after  year  because  of  the  blind 
following  of  supposed  authority,  nowhere  so 
blind  as  in  matters  of  literary  opinion. 

The  preparation  that  should  be  made  by  the 
teacher  who  is  to  choose  and  teach  this  literature 
is,  after  all,  not  so  very  formidable.  We  will 
leave  out  of  the  discussion  that  mystic  thing 
called  the  teacher's  gift.  Undoubtedly  there  is 
such  a  thing;  but  it  descendeth  upon  whom  it 
listeth,  enabling  him  to  choose  by  intuition 
and  to  teach  by  inspiration  the  special  bits  of 
literature  that  prove  to  be  best  for  the  children. 
But  such  a  person  is  not  safe,  unless  he  supple- 
ment his  gift  with  knowledge;  his  choice  is  purely 
personal  and  esoteric,  his  principles  accidental 
and  incommunicable. 

What  is  the  nature  of  the  supplement  such  a 
teacher  must  make  to  his  gift?  What  is  the 
training  with  which  the  teacher  without  the  gift 
must  fortify  himself?  It  is  little  more  than  one 
would  like  to  have  for  his  personal  culture,  and 
little  other  than  he  is  obliged  to  have  for  his  con- 
tact with  the  children  in  other  directions.  By 
dint  of  much  reading  of  literature  and  some  read- 
ing in  good  criticism  he  must  bring  himself  to  a 
sane  view  of  the  whole  subject,  realizing  what 


Literature  in  the  Elementary  School       13 

literature  is  and  what  it  is  not;  what  it  can  be 
expected  to  accomplish  in  human  culture,  and  what 
we  cannot  reasonably  ask  of  it.  He  must  know 
something  of  its  laws,  that  he  may  know  how  to 
judge  it  and  when  he  has  judged  it  aright.  This 
process  will  inevitably  have  refined  and  deepened 
his  taste  and  broadened  his  artistic  experience  in 
every  direction.  Of  course,  he  will  not  talk  to  his 
children  about  literature  as  an  art,  about  critical 
problems,  structural  principles,  and  all  that;  no 
more  will  he,  when  he  is  guiding  his  class  in 
evolving  for  themselves  food  and  shelter  by  way 
of  beginning  the  study  of  history,  talk  to  them 
about  primitive  culture  and  social  evolution.  But 
he  is  an  ill-equipped  and  untrustworthy  guide  if 
he  does  not  have  in  his  own  consciousness  these 
large  explaining  points  of  view.  It  is  precisely 
so  with  the  large  fundamental  principles  of  litera- 
ture. One  gathers  certainty  and  power  for  the 
choice  and  teaching  of  the  merest  folk-tale,  if  he 
is  able  to  see  in  it  the  working  of  the  great  and 
simple  laws  of  all  art.  And  more  specifically  he 
must  imbue  himself  with  the  spirit  of  the  child- 
like literature.  He  must  know  and  love  the 
wonderful  old  folk  and  fairy  tales,  not  regarding 
them  as  matter  for  the  nursery  and  the  kinder- 
garten, merely,  but  learning  to  love  them  as  great 
but  simple  art.  He  must  read  the  hero  tales  and 


14      Literature  in  the  Elementary  School 

romances  till  he  knows  them  as  a  treasure  house 
out  of  which  he  may  draw  at  his  need.  Many, 
many  children's  stories  and  poems  he  must  read 
to  be  able  to  judge  them  and  he  must  read  all 
those  artists,  Carroll,  Stevenson,  Pater,  Haupt- 
man,  who  in  Alice,  The  Child's  Garden,  The 
Child  in  the  House,  Hannele,  have  done  so  much 
to  interpret  for  us  in  the  artist's  way  the  con- 
sciousness of  the  child. 

In  teaching  literature,  as  in  all  that  he  does  for 
the  children,  he  will  have  use  for  all  the  knowl- 
edge he  can  get  of  childhood  and  children ;  for  all 
that  he  can  learn  of  the  trend  of  conclusion  in  psy- 
chology and  educational  philosophy;  for  all  knowl- 
edge he  can  acquire  as  to  the  meaning  and  import 
of  all  the  other  subjects  of  elementary  instruction. 
Only  then  can  he  choose  and  teach  literature  that 
is  fit  in  both  the  necessary  senses — adapted  to  the 
children  and  harmonious  in  spirit  with  the  other 
interests  they  are  pursuing.  Out  of  such  knowl- 
edge of  his  material  and  his  children  there  should 
grow  a  reasonably  clear  and  consistent  vision  of 
the  result  he  hopes  to  reach  and  the  steps  he  must 
take  to  reach  it.  Out  of  all  these  elements  should 
come  the  courage  to  examine  fearlessly  the  tra- 
ditional material.  Better  still,  out  of  this  com- 
bination will  come  that  faith,  enthusiasm,  and 
respect  for  his  material,  that  confidence  in  its 


Literature  in  the  Elementary  School      15 

usefulness,  that  hopefulness  as  to  its  results, 
which  are  desirable  in  a  teacher  of  any  sub- 
ject, but  which  are  absolutely  essential  in  the 
equipment  of  a  teacher  of  literature;  because  he 
must  above  all  things  radiate  both  light  and 
warmth;  he  must  diffuse  about  his  material  and 
his  children  the  breath  of  life  and  the  glow  of  art. 


CHAPTER  II 

THE  SERVICES   WE   MAY   EXPECT   LITERATURE   TO 
RENDER  IN  THE  EDUCATION  OF  CHILDREN 

It  would  seem  to  be  no  part  of  the  present  dis- 
cussion to  go  into  the  fundamental  processes  of  de- 
termining and  defining  a  child's  needs  and  tastes. 
In  this  matter  we  may  assume  and  build  upon 
the  larger  conclusions  of  psychology  and  educa- 
tional philosophy.  And  it  is  only  the  larger  and 
more  general  conclusions  that  we  need,  both  be- 
cause there  is  no  doubt  concerning  them,  as  there 
may  be  concerning  those  more  detailed  and 
remote,  and  because  when  we  are  dealing  with 
children  in  school,  and  in  class,  we  are  dealing 
with  the  type-child — with  a  composite  child,  as  it 
were,  to  whom  we  can  apply  only  the  larger  con- 
clusions. 

Everyone  who  helps  to  train  a  child  must 
realize  as  a  practical  fact  that  he  has  both  needs 
and  tastes.  The  emphasis  wisely  placed  in  our  day 
upon  enlisting  a  child's  interests  and  tastes  has 
tended  to  mislead  the  unwary  and  undo  the  unob- 
servant, so  as  to  produce  a  blindness  or  an  indif- 
ference as  to  his  needs.  Though,  as  a  matter  of 
mere  justice,  one  must  add  that  the  blindness  and 

r6 


In  the  Education  of  Children  17 

indifference  have  had  their  existence  chiefly  in 
the  indictments  of  those  who  opposed  the  move- 
ment when  it  was  new. 

Few  parents  or  teachers  may  now  be  found  so 
benighted  as  to  deny  the  delight  and  profit  of 
letting  the  child  grow  in  all  the  joy  and  freedom 
possible,  following  his  instinctive  interests,  ex- 
pressing his  original  primitive  impulses.  But  we 
must  grant,  however  sadly,  that  the  modern  child 
is  not  to  be  a  member  of  a  primitive  society ;  that 
he  is  living  and  to  live  in  a  complex,  advanced 
community,  to  whose  standards  he  must  be,  on 
the  whole,  adjusted  and  adapted.  Therefore,  his 
interests  and  activities  must  be  channeled  and 
guided;  new  interests  must  be  awakened;  he 
must  be  in  a  certain  sense  put,  while  he  is  still  a 
child,  into  possession  of  what  his  race  has  ac- 
quired only  after  many  generations. 

In  literature  then,  as  in  the  other  subjects, 
we  must  try  to  do  three  things:  (i)  allow  and 
meet  appropriately  the  child's  native  and  instinct- 
ive interests  and  tastes;  (2)  cultivate  and  direct 
these;  (3)  awaken  in  him  new  and  missing  inter- 
ests and  tastes.  What  is  there  in  literature 
serviceable  for  any  or  all  of  these  purposes,  and 
is  there  in  literature  anything  that  is  distinctively 
and  uniquely  useful  in  the  whole  process?  It 
•seems  only  reasonable  to  look  for  the  answers  to 


1 8      Literature  in  the  Elementary  C'hool 

these  questions  among  the  distinctive  features 
of  literature. 

The  most  conspicuous  and  distinguishing  fact 
about  literature  is,  of  course,  its  relation  to  the 
imagination.  Now,  when  the  student  of  litera- 
ture or  any  other  art  talks  about  the  imagination, 
he  must  be  allowed  to  begin,  as  one  may  say, 
where  the  psychologist  leaves  off,  because,  while 
the  psychologist  as  a  scientist  likes  to  limit  his 
attention  to  the  mind  acting  as  imagination,  the 
literary  critic  must  consider,  not  only  this  activity 
of  the  mind,  but  its  product — a  product  that 
presents  itself  as  an  elaborate  phenomenon.  This 
is  the  reason  why  the  natural  process  of  the 
literary  critic  seems  to  the  student  of  psychology 
a  beginning  at  the  wrong  end ;  because  it  is  a  be- 
ginning with  an  objective  product,  and  with  the 
larger  and  more  salient  features  of  that  product. 

Literature  finds  its  material  in  nature,  and  in 
human  nature  and  life.  It  has  no  source  of 
supply  other  than  that  of  every  other  kind  of 
human  thought.  But  before  this  material  be- 
comes literature,  the  imagination  has  lifted  it 
from  its  place  in  the  actual  world  and  elevated 
it  to  the  plane  of  art.  /  Working  upon  this  plane 
with  this  material,  the  imagination  modifies, 
transforms,  rearranges  it,  making  new  combina- 
tions, discovering  unsuspected  relations,  bring- 


tn  the  Education  of  Children  ig 

ing  to  light  hidden  qualities,  revealing  new 
likenesses  and  unlikenesses ;  and  at  last  returns 
to  us  a  product  that  is  a  new  creation.  Working 
in  its  larger  creative  capacity,  the  imagination 
constructs  out  of  material  which  may  be  scat- 
tered or  chaotic  when  gathered  by  observation, 
unified  and  organic  wholes. 

*tt  Indeed  this  large  whole,  this  completed  edifice 
that  the  art-product  presents  is  itself  an  image,  a 
vision  present  from  the  beginning  of  the  process 
of  creating.  As  the  architect  sees  before  he  begins 
to  build,  the  plan  of  his  house  as  a  whole  and 
measurably  complete  thing,  so  the  literary  artist 
has  from  the  beginning  this  large  image,  this 
plan  presenting  the  main  features  of  the  thing 
he  is  to  produce.  This  allows  for  the  fact  that 
new  details  are  added  as  he  goes  on,  the  plan 
modified  or  transformed.  But  the  artist's  final 
result  starts  as  an  image. 

This  is  not  mere  aesthetic  prosing.  We  must 
set  it  down  as  vitally  important  in  the  point  of 
view  of  the  teacher  of  literature,  that  he  must 
look  at  his  material  as  the  product  of  the  imagi- 
nation in  these  four  ways :  first,  the  imagination 
presents  the  large  image  or  plan;  second,  it 
chooses  the  material ;  third,  it  decorates,  purifies, 
or  otherwise  modifies  it;  fourth,  it  organizes  or 
recombines  it.  This  recombination  into  a  new 


2O      Literature  in  the  Elementary  School 

whole,  no  matter  how  simple  it  is,  will,  if  it  be  art 
at  all,  display  in  some  degree  the  large  qualities 
common  to  all  art-form — unity,  variety,  sym- 
metry, proportion,  harmony.  It  is  the  fact  that 
in  literature  you  have  a  large  but  manageable 
whole  got  together  under  laws  producing  these 
qualities  and  making  for  completeness  and  beauty 
— it  is  this  fact  that  gives  to  literature  a  large 
share  of  its  power  in  cultivating  the  child's 
imagination. 

Now,  there  is  a  very  common  misapprehension 
of  this  phrase  "cultivation  of  the  imagination," 
many  people  taking  it  for  granted  that  it  invari- 
ably and  exclusively  means  increasing  the  amount 
of  a  child's  fancy,  or  the  number  of  his  fancies. 
Undoubtedly  this  is  one  of  the  effects  of  litera- 
ture, and  undoubtedly  it  is  sometimes  a  desirable 
thing.  There  are  children  born  without  imagi- 
nation, or  so  early  crushed  down  by  the  common- 
placeness  of  the  adult  world  that  they  seem  never 
to  have  a  fancy — to  be  entirely  without  an  inner 
life  or  a  spiritual  playground.  But  the  average 
child  has  abundant  imagination,  and  an  abun- 
dance of  imaginations;  while  children  of  the 
artistic  or  emotional  temperament  may  often 
be  found,  especially  in  the  period  gathering 
about  the  seventh  year,  living  in  a  world  of 
their  own  creating,  moving  in  a  maze  of  fan- 


In  the  Education  of  Children  21 

tastic  notions  and  combinations  of  notions, 
unable  to  see  actual  things,  and  unable  to  report 
the  facts  of  an  observation  or  an  experience, 
because  of  the  throng  of  purely  fanciful  and 
invented  details  that  fills  their  consciousness.  To 
increase  the  amount  of  such  a  child's  imaginative 
material  would  be  a  mistake;  to  throttle  or 
ignore  his  imaginative  activities  would  be  a  mis- 
take still  more  serious. 

We  all  know  the  two  paths,  one  of  which  is 
likely  to  be  followed  by  such  a  child.  Either  he 
drifts  on,  indulging  his  dreams,  inventing  un- 
guided  fancies,  following  new  vagaries,  and 
later  reading  those  loose,  wild,  and  sentimental 
things  into  which  his  own  taste  guides  him,  till 
all  his  mental  processes  become  untrustworthy; 
or  he  is  taken  in  hand,  given  fact-studies  exclu- 
sively, becomes  ashamed  of  his  fancies,  or  loses 
interest  in  them  because  they  bear  no  relation  to 
anything  in  the  actual  world  as  he  is  learning  to 
know  it,  and  finally  loses  completely  his  artistic 
imaginative  power. 

As  an  aid  toward  averting  either  of  these 
disasters,  the  imaginative  child — who  is  the  aver- 
age child — as  well  as  the  over-fanciful  one,  needs 
to  have  developed  in  him  some  ability  to  select 
among  his  fancies,  so  as  to  cling  to  the  beautiful 
and  useful,  and  discard  the  idle  ones.  To  do 


22      Literature  in  the  Elementary  School 

this,  he  must  get  the  ability  to  put  them  together' 
in  some  plan  or  system  that  satisfies  both  his 
taste  and  his  judgment.  They  are  permanently 
serviceable  either  for  work  or  for  play  only  when 
they  attach  one  to  another  and  cohere  into  a 
somewhat  orderly  whole.  One  is  tempted  to  think 
that  to  put  the  children  into  possession  of  such 
a  faculty  or  such  an  accomplishment  is  the  most 
important  step  in  elementary  training,  because, 
as  a  matter  of  course,  it  at  once  radiates  from 
the  handling  of  their  invented  or  fanciful  material 
into  the  ordering  of  that  which  they  gather  from 
deliberate  observation;  and,  as  most  often  hap- 
pens, the  artistic  imagination  lends  a  helping 
hand  to  the  scientific  imagination.  Undoubtedly 
the  pleasantest  way  and  the  way  that  lies  most 
readily  open  in  helping  the  children  to  acquire 
and  develop  this  faculty,  is  the  way  of  literature. 
Here  it  is  that  they  see  most  easily  and  learn 
to  know  most  thoroughly  those  complete  and 
orderly  wholes  made  up  from  beautiful  or 
significant  details,  with  nothing  left  fragmen- 
tary or  unattached.  Of  course  the  teacher  must 
choose  his  bit  of  literature  with  a  view  to  this 
effect — a  lyric,  a  ballad,  a  story,  that  actually 
does  show  economy  of  material,  reasonable  and 
effective  arrangement  of  details,  and  a  satis- 
fying issue.  Not  all  the  literature  available 


In  the  Education  of  Children  23 

for  children  does  display  these  qualities.  Com- 
pare, for  example,  Perrault's  Cinderella  with 
Grimm's  version  of  the  same  tale.  The  former, 
whatever  the  faults  of  style  in  the  English  version 
we  all  know,  is  so  far  as  structure  goes,  a  little 
classic,  having  plenty  of  fancy,  to  be  sure,  but 
exhibiting  also  perfect  economy  of  incident,  cer- 
tainty and  delicacy  in  the  selection  and  arrange- 
ment of  details,  restraint  and  truthfulness  in  the 
outcome;  while  the  Grimm  story  shows  the 
chaotic,  unguided,  wasteful  choice  and  arrange- 
ment of  the  mind  which  remains  the  victim 
of  its  own  fancies.  The  one  is  mere  art-stuff, 
the  other  is  art. 

Now,  one  would  hasten  to  add  that  there  are 
children  in  every  class,  and  it  may  be  in  every 
family — unimaginative,  matter-of-fact,  common- 
place children — who  need  to  have  given  them,  and 
to  learn  to  enjoy,  if  possible,  the  mere  vagaries 
and  haphazard  inventions ;  and  it  would  be  a  pity 
to  deprive  any  child  of  them  in  his  hours  of 
intellectual  play.  But  it  is  from  his  contact,  fre- 
quent and  deep,  with  the  more  artistic  and 
ordered  bits  of  literature  that  we  may  expect  the 
child  to  find  that  special  cultivation  of  the  imagi- 
nation, the  power  of  seeing  an  organized  imagi- 
native whole;  and  out  of  this  experience  should 
grow  the  further  power,  so  important  in  this 


24      Literature  in  the  Elementary  School 

stage  of  his  education — that  of  grasping,  and 
constructing  out  of  his  own  material,  such  com- 
plete and  ordered  wholes. 

Another  way  in  which  the  imagination  works 
in  literature  is  of  peculiar  importance,  for  the 
children.  This,  too,  is  precisely  one  of  those 
characteristics  that  distinguish  literature  from 
everything  else.  It  lies  in  the  fact  that,  unlike 
\  Bother  kinds  of  writing,  literature  proceeds  by  the 
1  presentation  of  concrete,  specific  details,  the  actual 
|  iimage,  or  images,  combined  into  a  definite 
picture,  elevated  from  the  world  of  actuality  to 
the  plane  of  art,  or  created  on  that  plane  out  of 
details  gathered  from  any  source.  In  proportion 
as  we  find  in  literature  abstract  thinking,  state- 
ment of  general  truth  or  plain  fact,  facsimile 
description  or  mere  sentimentalizing,  in  that  pro- 
portion do  we  find  it  dull  and  inartistic.  "The 
orange  is  a  reddish-yellow  semi-tropical  fruit," 
is  a  statement  of  fact  plain  and  scientific.  It 
would  be  so  inartistic  as  to  be  absurd  in  a  line 
of  poetry.  "Among  the  dark  boughs  the  golden 
orange  glows,"  lifts  the  object  into  the  world  of 
art,  sets  it  in  a  picture,  even  gives  it  to  us  in  the 
round,  makes  it  moving  and  vital.  "The  fox- 
glove blooms  centripetally,"  one  may  say  as  dry 
fact,  but  when  the  poet  says 


In  the  Education  oj  Children  25 

The  fox-gloves  drop  from  throat  to  top 
A  daily  lesser  bell, 

while  he  conveys  the  same  fact,  he  does  it  in  the 
terms  of  a  definite  single  image,  a  specific  indi- 
vidual process,  that  gives  reality  and  distinction. 
It  is  by  virtue  of  this  method  of  presenting  its 
material  that  literature  performs  another  valu- 
able and  definite  service  for  the  child.  This  lies 
in  increasing  and  supplementing  in  many  direc- 
tions his  store  of  images.  Of  course,  even  the 
ordinary  child  has  many  images,  since  he  has 
eyes  and  ears  always  open  and  fingers  always 
active.  But  the  sights  and  sounds  he  sees  are 
not  widely  varied,  and  are  rarely  beautiful.  It 
is  the  extraordinary,  the  occasional  child  who 
sees  in  his  home  many  beautiful  objects, 
who  often  hears  good  music,  who  sees  in  his 
street  noble  buildings,  who  is  taken  to  the  woods, 
the  mountains,  the  sea,  where  he  may  store  up 
many  beautiful  and  distinguished  images  to  serve 
him  later  for  inner  joy  and  as  material  for 
thinking.  The  other  child  whose  experience  is 
bounded  by  the  streets,  the  shops,  or  the  farm, 
will  find  his  store  of  images  increased  and  en- 
riched by  contributions  from  literature.  And  the 
fact  that  the  images  and  pictures  in  literature  are 
given  with  concreteness,  with  vividness,  with 
vitality  in  them,  not  as  abstractions  nor  as  tech- 


26      Literature  in  the  Elementary  School 

nical  description,  gives  them  place  in  the  con- 
sciousness side  by  side  with  those  registered  by 
the  memory  from  actual  experience,  and  they 
serve  the  same  purposes. 

Indeed,  the  mere  raising  of  a  detail  to  the 
plane  of  art,  the  fitting  of  an  image  or  a  picture 
into  a  poem  or  a  story,  gives  it  new  distinction 
and  increases  its  value.  Says  Fra  Lippo : 

....    we're  made  so  that  we  love 

First  when  we  see  them  painted  things  we  have  passed 

Perhaps  a  hundred  times  nor  cared  to  see. 

So  the  child,  when  the  details  he  knows  or  may 
know  in  real  life  are  set  in  literature,  sees  them 
surrounded  with  a  halo  of  new  beauty  and  value. 
This  halo,  this  well-known  radiance  of  art, 
spreads  itself  over  the  objects  that  he  sees  about 
him,  and  they,  too,  take  on  a  new  beauty,  and  so 
pass  into  his  storehouse  of  images  with  their 
meaning  and  usefulness  increased. 

Whatever  else  may  be  the  function  of  the 
imagination  in  literature  it  has  these  two — that 
of  seeing  and  creating  organic  wholes,  and  that 
of  presenting  concrete  images  and  pictures; 
these  two  would  entitle  it  to  a  distinctive  place 
in  the  training  of  a  child's  imagination. 

As  an  accompaniment,  perhaps  as  a  conse- 
quence, of  the  tendency  of  the  imagination 
to  unify  and  harmonize  its  material  by  seeking 


In  the  Education  of  Children  27 

always  a  deeper  basis  and  a  larger  category,  and 
the  other  tendency  to  use  in  literature  the 
specific  detail  rather  than  the  generalization,  wt 
have  the  fact  of  figurative  thinking  and  speak- 
ing as  a  characteristic  of  this  art.  A  figure 
involves  the  discovery  of  a  striking  or  essential 
contrast  or  contradiction  between  objects,  or  the 
recognition  of  a  likeness  or  affinity  ranging  in 
closeness  from  mere  similarity  to  complete 
identification.  Whichever  be  the  process,  the 
result  is  the  universal  and  typical  meanings  of 
literature,  its  pleasing  indirection  of  statement,  its 
enlarged  outlook  upon  many  other  spheres. 
the  vista  of  suggestion  and  association  opening 
in  every  direction,  the  surprised,  the  shocked  or 
delighted  recognitions,  that  await  us  on  every 
page.  We  will  pass  by  as  mystical  and  not  demon- 
strable the  inviting  theory  that  a  contact  with 
these  contrasts  and  resemblances  may  put  into 
the  hands  of  the  child  a  clue  to  the  better  arrange- 
ment of  the  fragments  that  compose  his  world, 
and  may  help  on  in  him  that  process  of  unifica- 
tion and  identification  which  is  the  paramount 
human  task;  we  must  leave  out  of  sight  here,  as 
too  speculative  and  unpractical,  the  enlargement 
and  definition  of  his  categories  that  would  come 
to  the  child  as  it  comes  to  everyone,  with  even  the 
most  elementary  recognition  of  the  fundamental 


f 

28      Literature  in  the  Elementary  School 

separations  and  unions  involved  in  figures;  these 
we  may  leave  aside,  while  we  take  the  simple  and 
quite  obvious  aspect  of  the  matter — that  the  study 
and  understanding  of  even  the  commoner  figures 
quicken  the  child's  intelligence,  and  help  to 
develop  mental  alertness  and  certainty.  Not  even 
a  sense  of  humor  is  so  useful  in  his  intellectual 
experience  as  the  ability  to  understand  and  use 
figures  of  speech.  What  makes  so  pathetic  or  so 
appalling  a  spectacle  as  the  person  who  never 
catches  the  transferred  and  ironic  turns  of  expres- 
sion of  which  even  ordinary  conversation  is  full  ? 
The  poor  belated  mind  stands  helpless  amidst  the 
play  of  allusion  that  flashes  all  about  him,  and  not 
even  fear  of  thunder,  which  is  the  most  alert 
sensation  Emerson  can  attribute  to  him,  can  put 
him  into  touch  with  his  kind.  The  best  place 
to  train  a  child  toward  quickness,  the  mental  ease 
and  adroitness  that  come  of  a  ready  under- 
standing and  use  of  figure  is  in  literature,  one  of 
whose  signal  characteristics  is  the  use  of  figure. 
The  appreciation  of  remote  and  delicate  figures 
will,  of  course,  come  later  in  a  student's  experi- 
ence than  the  elementary  years,  after  he  has  had 
more  contact  with  life  and  the  world  and  a  much 
widened  experience  in  literature.  But  the  child 
who  has  been  taught  to  understand  and  to  use 


In  the  Education  of  Children  29 

any  of  the  simpler  figures  has  been  helped  a  long 
way  on  the  road  of  art  and  philosophy. 

Literature  differs  from  other  kinds  of  writ- 
ing in  its  use  of  language,  since  it  constantly 
aims  at  beautiful  and  striking  expression.  Since 
it  often  seeks  beautiful  and  delicate  effects,  it  is 
more  often  closely  accurate  than  other  kinds  of 
writing;  and  since  it  sometimes  seeks  strong, 
noble  effects,  it  is  sometimes  more  vigorous  than 
other  writing.  For  the  same  and  kindred 
reasons  it  seeks  variety  of  expression,  and  so 
displays  a  larger  choice  of  words,  including  new 
and  rare  words.  These  facts  have  an  immediate 
and  beneficial  effect  upon  the  style  and  vocabu-  \ 
lary  of  the  children.  The  fact  is  plainly  obvious 
to  anyone  who  has  observed  the  superiority  as  to 
vocabulary  and  form  of  those  children  who  have 
had  much  reading  or  who  come  from  a  literary 
family,  and  has  seen  the  improvement  of  all  the 
children  in  these  matters  as  they  add  to  their 
experience  in  literature.  This  enrichment  and 
refinement  of  language  must  be  reckoned  among 
the  distinctive  services  of  literature. 

,  Literature,  in  common  with  the  other  arts,  but 
unlike  other  kinds  of  writing,  aims  at  beauty — 
cares  first  of  all  for  beauty.  One  must  under- 
stand the  term,  of  course,  as  artistic  or  aesthetic 
beauty,  as  it  has  been  interpreted  for  us  from 


3O      Literature  in  the  Elementary  School 

Plato  down,  as  quite  other  than  mere  prettiness 
or  superficial  attractiveness.  First,  in  the  selec- 
tion of  its  subject-matter  it  is  the  strikingly 
beautiful  in  nature,  in  character,  in  action,  and 
in  experience  that  it  seeks  out  for  presentation. 
When  it  uses  ugly  or  horrible  material,  it  is  for 
one  of  these  purposes:  by  way  of  bringing  into 
stronger  relief  beauty  actually  presented  beside  it ; 
by  way  of  implying  beauty  not  actually  presented ; 
by  way  of  producing  the  grotesque  as  a  form  of 
beauty;  by  way  of  awakening  fear  or  terror, 
which  are  elements  in  one  kind  of  beauty;  or  by 
way  of  accomplishing  some  exploitation  or  reform 
conceived  by  the  artist  as  his  duty  or  his  oppor- 
tunity; so  that  the  artist's  use  of  ugly  material 
produces  in  every  case  some  effect  of  beauty. 
Now  the  problem  of  the  child's  contact  with 
beauty  as  the  material  or  subject-matter  of 
literature  is  the  problem  of  his  contact  with  it 
anywhere  else.  We  cannot  too  often  remind 
ourselves  that  the  material  in  literature  is  that  of 
life  and  the  actual  world  chosen  out,  often  freed 
from  accidental  and  temporary  qualities,  and  put 
into  suitable  setting  in  art  It  therefore  makes 
an  appeal  not  different  in  kind,  and  in  many 
cases  not  different  in  intensity,  from  the  appeal 
of  objects  perceived  by  the  actual  senses.  Accept- 
ing once  for  all  the  conditions  of  the  imagination, 


In  the  Education  0}  Children  31 

we  must  conclude  that  the  effect  upon  the  child's 
taste  is  the  same  as  in  his  contact  with  beautiful 
and  noble  objects  under  conditions  of  outer  space. 
And  as,  when  we  adopt  the  psychology  and 
pedagogy  of  Whitman's  "There  was  a  child  went 
forth,"  believing  that  all  that  the  little  traveler 
encounters  becomes  really  and  truly  a  part  of 
him,  we  are  eager  to  have  him  encounter  the 
most  beautiful  sights  and  sounds  of  the  physical 
world,  so  we  earnestly  desire  for  him  contact 
with  the  noble  and  beautiful  objects  and  persons 
of  the  other-world  of  literature. 

In  the  second  place,  literature,  whether  it  be 
handling  beautiful  material  or  for  any  reason 
dealing  with  ugly  material,  is  always  seeking 
beauty  of  form.  There  are  the  larger  matters  of 
art-form,  such  as  unity,  harmony,  completeness, 
balance — those  large  beneficent  elements  of 
beauty  which  should  be  in  the  child's  literature 
as  in  all  his  other  art,  constituting  the  genial 
atmosphere  which  he  breathes  in  without  knowing 
it  Of  course,  one  does  not  talk  to  him  about 
them,  but  there  they  are  in  his  story,  his  picture, 
his  song,  bringing  their  gift  of  certainty  and 
repose.  Then  there  are  the  more  concrete  and 
obvious  details  of  formal  beauty  that  belong  dis- 
tinctively to  the  literary  art,  and  are  partly  mat- 
ters of  craftsmanship — the  musical  effect  of  the 


32      Literature  in  the  Elementary  School 

spoken  word,  prose  or  verse,  the  choice  word  or 
phase,  the  beautiful  arrangement  of  clause  or 
sentence.  Certain  of  these  elements  may  be  de- 
liberately brought  to  the  child's  attention,  others 
may  not.  But  in  either  case  they  help  to  form  the 
whole  atmosphere  of  beauty  and  distinction  that 
surrounds  a  bit  of  good  literature.  And  we 
cannot  fail  to  believe  in  the  refining  and  stimu- 
lating influence  upon  the  child's  taste  of  his  con- 
tact with  formal  beauty  in  this  as  in  the  other 
arts. 

As  distinctive  of  literature,  setting  it  apart 
from  other  kinds  of  writing,  one  must  note  that 
it  always  has  in  it  the  warmth,  the  fervor,  of 
emotion,  "Dowered  with  the  scorn  of  scorn,  the 
love  of  love,  the  hate  of  hate,"  is  the  poet,  and 
always  the  glow  of  feeling  lights  up  his  line. 
"The  foxglove  blooms  centripetally,"  is  cold  and 
colorless,  however  interesting  it  may  be  as  techni- 
cal fact, 

The  fox-gloves  drop  from  throat  to  top, 

A  daily  lesser  bell 

quivers  with  emotional  associations.  "I  come  to 
bury  Caesar  not  to  praise  him" — the  caesura  of 
that  line  is  Mark  Antony's  sob,  and  the  sympa- 
thetic throb  of  the  elementary  class. 

The  king  sits  in  Dumfernline  toun 
Drinking  the  blude-red  wine. 


In  the  Education  of  Children  33 

What  strange  thrill  is  this  that  goes  down  the 
eight-year-old's  spine  at  the  sound  of  these 
words  ? 

It  was  an  ancient  mariner 

And  he  stoppeth  one  of  three. 

The  mere  lines  submerge  us  at  once  in  a  new 
atmosphere  tingling  with  charmed  excitement. 

One  would  like  to  say  with  some  new  meaning 
and  emphasis  that  it  is  precisely  this  emotion, 
permeating,  wanning,  and  coloring  literature, 
that  gives  it  its  reality,  that  establishes  its  hold, 
that  gives  it  its  relation  to  the  world — on  the  one 
side  reflecting  life  on  the  other  producing  life. 

But  it  is  about  this  matter  of  emotion  that  the 
teacher's  dangers  and  misgivings  lie.  There  are 
those  who  fix  upon  its  emotional  nature  as 
grounds  for  suspicion,  if  not  of  condemnation, 
of  literature  as  a  means  of  discipline.  And  we 
must  all  hasten  to  confess  that  this  atmosphere 
of  emotion  is  the  snare  of  the  weak  teacher  and 
the  curse  of  weak  literature.  Emotion  displayed 
or  aroused  unworthily,  or  attached  to  inadequate 
or  ignoble  stimuli,  is  either  mere  sentimentality 
or  undue  enthusiasm.  It  should  be  reckoned 
nothing  short  of  a  crime  to  stimulate  unduly  a 
child's  emotion,  and  to  awaken  in  him  feelings 
for  which  his  nature  is  not  ripe.  But  the  policy 
or  theory  of  ignoring  his  emotions,  of  suppress- 


34      Literature  in  the  Elementary  School 

ing  them,  or  of  keeping  them  subdued  in  school 
within  the  bounds  of  his  mild  pleasure  in  scientific 
observation  or  mathematical  achievement,  is 
surely  short-sighted.  If  the  day  has  not  already 
come,  it  is  fast  approaching  when  we  shall  see 
that  education  means  also  the  calling  out  and 
exercising  of  the  feelings — when  we  shall  realize 
the  dessicating  influence  of  American  school  train- 
ing upon  the  emotional  nature  of  children.  It 
should  not  be  difficult  for  any  teacher  who  has 
studied  the  problems  of  childhood,  and  who  has 
learned  something  about  judging  literature,  to 
choose  such  literary  things  as  reflect  and  invite 
the  kind  and  degree  of  feeling  suitable  for  a 
child,  as  give  him  legitimate  occasion  for 
legitimate  emotion,  as  exercise  and  cultivate 
this  side  of  his  nature,  effecting  in  him  that 
purifying  discharge  of  emotion  which  Aristotle 
regarded  as  one  of  the  helpful  offices  of  litera- 
ture. It  is  a  matter  for  rejoicing  that  in  the 
atmosphere  of  feeling  which  surrounds  literature 
and  music  we  may  counteract  and  balance  in  the 
child  the  hardening  influence  of  his  fact-studies 
and  his  general  school  discipline. 

The  mere  pragmatism  of  the  teaching  often 
turned  against  literature  as  a  discipline,  that  every 
emotional  state  should  eventuate  in  activity,  is 
met  by  the  contention  that  the  admiration  or  con- 


In  the  Education  of  Children  35 

tempt  called  out  by  the  record  of  the  courageous 
or  cowardly  deed,  the  apprehension  and  enjoy- 
ment of  the  musical  line  or  the  beautiful  image, 
contain  their  own  issue  and  event.  They  register 
at  once  a  higher  moral  standard  or  a  quickened 
and  deepened  taste. 

It  has  already  been  said,  and  it  must  be  said 
again,  that  it  is  by  virtue  of  this  emotional  grip 
coupled  with  the  powerful  and  ever-to-be- 
reckoned-with  instinct  for  imitation,  that  litera- 
ture takes  hold  upon  us,  passes  into  our  lives, 
affecting  our  judgment,  our  ideals,  our  conduct 

We  live  by  admiration,  hope,  and  love, 

And  even  as  these  are  well  and  wisely  placed, 

In  dignity  of  being  we  ascend. 

says  Wordsworth;  and  literature  affords  many 
opportunities  of  placing  well  and  wisely  these 
living  and  life-giving  emotions. 

This  brings  us  at  once  to  the  vision  of  another 
service  rendered  the  child  by  literature.  Here  he 
is  as  if  he  looked  upon  life.  He  sees  events 
worked  out  to  the  issue ;  he  sees  people  expressing 
themselves  in  deeds  and  words,  transforming 
themselves  and  others  for  good  or  bad,  calling 
upon  him  for  approval  or  condemnation,  or  for 
sympathy.  He  finds  here  his  heroes,  his  ideals, 
his  models.  He  learns  manners  without  tears 
and  morals  without  a  sermon.  In  some  sense  he 


36      Literature  in  the  Elementary  School 

sees  life  steadily,  and  sees  it  whole,  so  that  he 
widens  his  social  horizon  to  take  in  these  many 
groups  of  all  sorts  of  men;  mentally  and  morally 
he  must  enlarge  to  contain  the  persons  and  events 
he  learns  to  know.  It  is  impossible  to  overesti- 
mate the  importance  in  a  child's  moral  life, 
whether  we  interpret  this  as  a  social  or  an  indi- 
vidual matter,  of  the  contribution  made  by  litera- 
ture to  his  vision,  his  pattern,  of  society  and  of 
character.  This  ability  of  literature  to  influence 
the  child's  inner  life  and  his  conduct  is  so  real 
that  it  has  as  many  dangers  as  advantages. 
There  must  be  no  mistakes  in  selecting  for  him, 
if  he  is  to  ascend  in  dignity  of  being  by  the  steps 
of  literature.  It  must  contain  those  pictures  of 
life  and  conduct  that  are  fit  and  suitable  for  the 
child  to  witness,  and  possible  for  him  to  compre- 
hend. They  must  be  sound  to  the  core,  arousing 
and  permanently  engaging  his  genuine  interest 
and  his  best  feelings. 

And  after  all,  the  best  thing  we  can  do  for  a 
child  in  teaching  him  literature  is  to  give  him  a 
permanent  and  innocent  joy.  We  all  have 
our  moods  in  which  we  are  ready  to  say  that  the 
first  unconscious,  unpremeditated  pleasure  that 
comes  of  a  bit  of  literature  is  the  only  result 
worth  having.  And  we  who  are  professing 
teachers  of  literature  have  times  of  abnormal 


In  the  Education  of  Children  37 

sensitiveness  to  the  scorn  of  the  dilettante  critics 
who  call  us  academical  and  pedagogical.  And 
though  we  know  that  pleasure  in  literature  has  its 
elements  and  its  causes,  both  easily  observable, 
and  that  taste  may  be  fostered  and  grown  by  well- 
known  processes,  it  is  always  a  wholesome  hour 
for  us  when  we  are  thrust  back  upon  the  fact  that, 
though  we  may  have  disciplined  his  imagination, 
and  may  have  quickened  his  fancy ;  we  may  have 
awakened  and  strengthened  his  sense  of  beauty; 
we  may  have  exercised  and  cultivated  his  emo- 
tions; we  may  have  enlarged  his  outlook  upon 
life,  and  have  provided  him  with  social  and  per- 
sonal ideals;  it  is  nevertheless,  better  than  all 
these  because  it  includes  most  of  them,  if  we  have 
opened  up  for  our  scholar  this  permanent  avenue 
of  noble  enjoyment. 

Now,  not  all  these  results  will  appear  in  all 
the  children.  Some  of  them  the  teacher  will 
not  see  in  any  child  of  certain  classes.  They 
are  not  easily  ponderable  and  measurable — even 
less  so  than  those  of  other  disciplines.  It  is  easy 
to  know  when  a  child  can  multiply  and  divide.  It 
is  not  easy  to  know  when  he  is  in  a  hopeful  stage 
of  literary  experience.  But  it  is  only  in  the  direc- 
tion of  the  results  we  have  been  discussing  that 
the  teacher  of  literature  can  always  hopefully 
work. 


CHAPTER  III 


In  modern  literary  study  we  have  been  placing 
much  emphasis  upon  the  kinds  or  species  of 
literary  production.  In  the  light  of  the  aesthetics 
of  our  day  and  the  newer  psychology  of  art  we 
have  been  learning  much  concerning  the  nature, 
the  function,  and  one  might  say  the  habits  of 
these  species.  These  studies  have  coincided  in 
time,  most  opportunely  for  the  teacher  of  litera- 
ture, with  those  that  have  aimed  at  the  establish- 
ing of  the  needs  and  tastes  of  the  elementary 
and  adolescent  ages.  There  is  a  real  satisfaction 
born  of  the  confidence  one  feels  in  approaching 
his  problem  of  choosing  literature  for  children 
from  these  two  largest  points  of  view — that  of  the 
species  or  fundamental  kinds  of  literature  on  the 
one  hand,  that  of  the  child's  actual  needs*  and 
tastes  on  the  other.  This  method  of  approach 
seems  to  put  the  whole  field  adequately  before 
his  view,  and  to  give  authority  and  certainty  to 
his  final  choice. 

As  a  matter  of  fact  there  are  certain  character- 
38 


Kinds  and  Elements  39 

istics  invariable  and  inevitable  in  each  of  the 
five  species  of  literature — epic,  drama,  lyric, 
fiction,  essay — that  tell  us  at  once  something  of 
its  fitness  for  our  purpose.  The  essay,  for 
example  in  its  typical  form  is  by  its  essential 
nature  inappropriate.  The  literary  essay,  as  it  is 
actually  constituted,  is  in  subject-matter  too 
abstract  and  remote,  in  mood  too  complex  and 
intricate,  and  in  style  too  allusive  and  evasive.  Its 
invitation  is  to  a  region  for  which  a  child  has 
neither  chart  nor  map.  The  essay  rests  upon 
old,  old  presuppositions;  these  very  presuppo- 
sitions it  is  that  must  be  slowly  and  through  many 
experiences  built  into  the  mental  life  of  the  child. 
To  be  sure,  there  are  a  few  bits  called  essays — 
such  as  certain  of  Lamb's  more  anecdotal  papers, 
some  of  the  narrative  numbers  of  The  Spectator, 
nature-studies  with  marked  literary  qualities  like 
some  of  those  of  John  Burroughs — that  the 
grades  can  understand  and  enjoy.  But  these  are 
not  typical  essays,  and  they  have  not  the  true 
essay  spirit.  This  spirit,  which  creates  for  itself 
an  atmosphere  hard  to  describe,  compounded  as 
it  is  of  universal  knowingness,  ironic  indirection, 
delicately  intellectual  emotion,  and  faintly  emo- 
tional intellectuality — this  spirit  is  quite  alien  to 
childhood. 

And  as  it  is  actually  constituted,  the  literary 


4O      Literature  in  the  Elementary  School 

drama,  too,  represents  a  life  and  presents  an  art- 
form  so  complex  and  so  mature  as  to  be  beyond 
a  child's  grasp.  Not  until  this  period  is  closing — \ 
and  with  many  children  not  even  then — comes 
the  hour  of  ripeness  for  the  drama.  This  ques- 
tion of  the  child  and  dramatic  literature  has  so 
many  conditions  and  modifications  that  it  must 
be  discussed  at  length  in  another  chapter.  But  it 
is  evident  to  every  sympathetic  student  of  child- 
hood that  this  is  not  the  period  to  present  the 
complex  situations,  the  difficult  problems,  the 
over-ripe  experiences,  that  prevailingly  constitute 
the  material  of  literary  drama. 

The  literature  we  do  give  the  children  should 
correspond  to  the  stage  of  their  development 
in  matching  as  nearly  as  may  be,  in  tone  and 
spirit  their  own  activities  and  interests,  or  should 
be  calculated  to  arouse  in  them  those  interests 
and  activities  they  ought  legitimately  to  have.  It 
should  be  of  that  kind  that  gives  a  large  free 
sweep  of  activity ;  that  reveals  character  and  con- 
duct in  their  simpler,  open  aspects;  that  exhibits 
literary  art  phenomena  in  their  plainer,  more 
striking  varieties.  These  qualities  are  to  be  found 
in  chosen  specimens  of  the  three  other  species  of 
literature — epic,  fiction,  lyric.  Of  course-  one 
must  select  from  each  of  the  three  those  speci- 
mens that  do  exhibit  the  qualities  he  seeks. 


Kinds  and  Elements  41 

He  could  not  offer  to  children  a  developed  epic 
in  its  entirety;  but  there  are  many  things  of  the 
epic  kind — ballads,  hero-tales,  fairy-sagas,  certain 
detachable  sections  of  the  great  epics  themselves 
— precisely  suited  to  them.  We  would  not  intro- 
duce them  into  a  mature  novel,  but  there  are 
Mdrchen  for  them,  tales  of  conquest  and  adven- 
ture, stories  of  other  children's  doings.  They 
would  be  lost  and  bored  in  the  presence  of  the 
elegy  or  the  sonnet;  but  we  may  find  jingles  and 
songs,  and  later  on  odes,  fit  and  right  for  them. 
In  the  epic  kind  of  literature  we  include  not  only 
the  epic,  but  all  those  other  poetic  compositions 
whose  principles  of  organization  is  narrative — 
ballad,  pastoral,  idyll,  etc.  The  presupposition  in 
favor  of  them  as  good  for  the  children  (and  it 
is  borne  out  by  the  demonstration)  lies  in  these 
two  facts:  they  are  concerned  with  events  and 
achievements,  and  are  therefore  likely  to  be 
active  and  objective ;  they  proceed  by  the  method 
of  story — the  easiest  and  most  helpful  for  the 
child  to  follow  and  to  grasp.  It  seems  necessary 
to  say  again  that  the  members  of  the  epic  group 
must  be  scanned  as  narrowly  with  reference  to 
their  fitness  in  subject-matter  and  suitability  in 
form  as  those  of  any  other  group.  There  is  a 
fallacy  in  the  assumption  that  epic  is  a  childlike 
thing,  the  product  of  the  childhood  of  the  race. 


42      Literature  in  the  Elementary  School 

This  is  akin  to  the  amusing  opinion  that  myth — 
Greek  myth,  for  example — is  a  childlike  accumu- 
lation of  childish  inventions.  Nay,  epic  poetry, 
even  those  epics  that  seem  most  nearly  folk- 
poetry — the  Beowulf,  for  example — are  built 
upon  hoary  civilizations,  each  of  them  having 
behind  it  an  art-tradition  already  old.  And  if 
there  is  an  unwarranted  assumption  in  the  theory 
that  epic  is  childlike,  there  is  an  unwarrantable 
presumption  in  the  theory  that  the  mature  per- 
son outgrows  it — that  its  appeal  is  only  to  a  primi- 
tive and  undeveloped  taste.  The  value  to  the 
child  of  the  epic  is  in  its  objectivity  and  activity, 
its  large  horizons  and  big  spaces.  The  taste  for 
these  things  should  survive  and  grow  stronger, 
as  should  every  good  taste  planted  and  fostered 
in  childhood.  The  mature  person  but  adds  to  his 
enjoyment  of  these  things  a  deeper  enjoyment  as 
he  grows  to  appreciate  the  finer  details  and  sub- 
tler meanings  hidden  from  the  child.  The  merest 
primary  child  can  love  and  enjoy  the  heroic  or 
amusing  adventures  of  Odysseus ;  he  should  enjoy 
them  equally  when  he  is  forty;  but  by  that  time 
he  will  have  added  the  ability  to  appreciate  also 
the  wealth  of  artistic  detail,  the  profound  knowl- 
edge of  human  nature,  the  large  mental  and  reli- 
gious atmosphere  of  the  poem.  For  most  of  this 


Kinds  and  Elements  .  43 

added  enjoyment  the  child  has  and  should  have 
no  intellectual  welcome,  no  space  yet  ready. 

Therefore,  in  giving  the  great  epics,  the 
teacher  must  know  what  aspects,  details,  and 
episodes  to  pass  by  or  to  pass  lightly  over.  And 
he  must  look  carefully  to  the  fitness  of  any  piece 
of  this  kind  he  may  consider.  It  is  not  sufficient 
that  it  have  a  story.  For  example  Sohrab  and 
Rustum  is  a  little  epic  which  fits  perfectly  certain 
seventh  or  eighth  grades,  because,  in  addition  to 
a  sufficiently  good  story,  it  has  an  atmosphere  of 
vast  spaces  and  large  movements,  a  wealth  of 
broad,  noble  details;  and  above  all,  it  handles 
and 'evokes  a  simple,  primitive  emotion,  a  sor- 
row which  is  as  impersonal  as  the  sorrows  of 
Odysseus — a  true  epic  sorrow.  In  contrast, 
Enoch  Arden,  another  piece  of  the  epic  kind,  is 
not  adapted  to  children  of  any  age,  because  it 
displays  a  complex  domestic  and  psychic  situa- 
tion which  no  child  ought  to  be  called  upon 
to  realize,  while  the  emotion  called  for  is  both 
in  kind  and  amount  the  sentimentality  of  adults. 
Even  among  the  folk-ballads  the  same  discrimi- 
nation must  guide  us.  Sir  Patrick  Spens  is  the 
boy's  own;  while  the  poignant  pathos  of  Young 
Waters,  true  and  piercing  as  it  is,  is  not  for  the 
boy  to  feel. 

So,  as  will  be  said  many  times,  but  always 


44      Literature  in  the  Elementary  School 

with  meaning,  we  choose,  when  we  are  sane,  not 
the  novel,  complex  in  plot,  involved  in  motive, 
overcharged  in  emotional  atmosphere,  but  the 
simple,  direct-moving  romance,  the  hero-tale, 
whose  subject-matter  and  method  are  so  broad 
and  universal  as  to  fit  even  the  child.  We  can 
welcome,  for  example,  the  hearty  boyishness 
of  Quentin  Durward  or  Kidnapped,  where  we 
could  not  pilot  our  elementary  class  safe  through 
the  social  and  ethical  sophistications  of  The 
Heart  of  Midlothian,  nor  steer  them  intelligently 
through  the  involved  structure  and  difficult  nar- 
rative medium  of  The  Master  of  Ballantrae. 

So  with  the  lyric  form.  If  one's  choice  of  a 
lyric  lay  between  "The  splendor  falls  on  castle 
walls"  and  "Tears,  idle  tears,"  he  would  renounce 
the  complex  mature  moods,  the  figures  and  allu- 
sions for  which  the  child's  experience  has  given 
him  no  preparation,  the  pervading  tone  of  rich 
melancholy  of  the  one,  in  favor  of  the  buoyant 
objectivity  and  more  obvious  emotional  mood 
of  the  other. 

Through  all  the  earlier  years  of  the  elementary 
school  with  some  classes,  and  in  some  communi- 
ties throughout  the  period,  the  literary  experience 
of  the  children  may  best  be  made  up  from  speci- 
mens of  these  three  species.  It  may  be,  however, 
that  certain  seventh  or  eighth  grades  (merely  to 


Kinds  and  Elements  45 

name  the  older  children)  will  be  found  mature 
enough  to  profit  by  the  study  of  certain  of  the 
more  heroic  literary  dramas.  The  same  tests 
of  objectivity  and  simplicity  must  be  applied  in 
selecting  these.  We  should  choose,  for  example, 
the  obvious,  and  boisterous  fun  of  The  Comedy 
of  Errors,  rather  than  the  half-hidden  satire  of  A 
Midsummer-Night's  Dream;  Julius  Caesar,  since 
it  may  fitly  be  taught  as  a  heroic  tragedy;  Mac- 
beth, which,  however  violent  in  motive  and 
method,  is  still  direct  and  simple  enough  to  be 
within  the  child's  imaginative  realization. 

In  most  schools  also,  we  may  count  upon  find- 
ing in  these  oldest  children  in  the  elementary 
grades  some  power  of  meditation,  some  interest 
in  abstract  questions,  some  appreciation  of 
humor  and  wit,  much  love  of  eloquence;  so  that 
in  this  last  year  they  may  profitably  read  in  class 
some  essays.  To  be  sure,  we  will  choose,  not 
Montaigne,  but  Bacon ;  not  Pater,  but  John  Bur- 
roughs; not  Dream  Children,  but  A  Dissertation 
on  Roast  Pig.  In  short,  we  will  avoid  the 
critical  and  the  mystical  in  essays,  and  give  them 
objective  out-of-door  essays  like  Wake-Robin, 
humorous  anecdotal  essays  like  Old  China,  elo- 
quent oratorical  essays  like  Gladstone's  Kin  Be- 
yond Sea. 

Indeed,  during  this  seventh  and  eighth  grade 


46      Literature  in  the  Elementary  School 

period  begins  the  child's  hour  of  ripeness  for 
eloquence  and  oratory.  And  it  is  wise  and  easy 
to  meet  and  supply  his  interest  with  essays  of  the 
address  variety,  which  do  for  him  the  character- 
istic services  performed  by  the  literary  essay,  at 
the  same  time  that  they  satisfy  his  awakening 
hunger  for  the  rolling  music  of  the  oratorical 
form,  answer  to  his  dawning  interest  in  the  big 
world  and  great  questions,  and  help  to  build  a 
bridge  for  him  into  the  public  speaking  and  dra- 
matic aspects  of  his  literary  work  that  he  will 
find,  or  ought  to  find,  in  the  secondary  school. 

For  want  of  a  good  term,  I  have  used,  in  the 
title  to  this  chapter,  the  word  "elements"  to 
designate  all  the  details  that  go  to  make  up  the 
literary  work  of  art*  Into  this  term  we  cover, 
for  mere  convenience,  and  to  avoid  cumbering 
ourselves  with  a  tiresome  and  profitless  bit  of 
syllabus-making,  these  and  such  matters:  struc- 
ture, story,  plot,  incident,  character,  verse,  image, 
figure,  epithet,  and  many  other  details  used 
to  produce  the  total  effect  of  a  bit  of  literature. 
It  becomes  necessary  to  inquire  which  among 
these  elements  we  shall  expect  to  find  serviceable 
for  our  purpose.  Of  course,  they  are  all  valu- 
able even  for  a  child  in  the  sense  that  they  all 
contribute  to  the  general  effect  upon  his  con- 
sciousness; but  certain  of  them  may  profitably 


Kinds  and  Elements  47 

be  brought  into  high  light  and  deliberately  im- 
pressed upon  the  class;  others  would  best  be  left 
lying  by  for  his  adult  appreciation. 

Take  for  example,  the  matter  of  structure, 
by  which  we  mean  the  larger  plan  or  composition 
by  virtue  of  which  the  bit  of  art — poern  or  story 
— has  a  beginning  a  middle  and  an  end;  by  vir- 
tue of  which  it  starts  somewhere,  proceeds  in  an 
orderly  manner,  and  reaches  a  destination ;  as,  for 
example,  in  our  ever  admirable  The  Old  Woman 
Who  Found  the  Sixpence,  where  you  have  the 
sixpence  found,  the  pig  bought,  the  obstacles  on 
the  road  home,  the  acquiescence  of  the  cat,  the 
unraveling  of  the  difficulties,  the  safe  return 
home — a  most  orderly  interdependence  and 
sequence  of  incidents;  or,  as  an  example  of  a 
different  kind  of  structure,  Stevenson's  Foreign 
Lands:  the  child  climbing  the  cherry  tree  sees  his 
own  garden  at  his  feet,  his  neighbor's  garden 
over  the  wall,  follows  the  white  road  to  its  disap- 
pearance, traces  the  river  to  its  vanishment,  fol- 
lows it  in  his  mind's  eye  to  its  fall  into  the  far- 
away sea,  and  then  strays  on  and  on  into  the 
other-world  of  his  own  fancy — a  perfect  vanish- 
ing perspective;  or  examine  with  this  matter  of 
structure  in  mind  Tennyson's  Bugle-Song,  where 
you  will  find  a  balanced,  orderly  composition — 
the  horn,  the  actual  echo,  the  spiritual  echo. 


48      Literature  in  the  Elementary  School 

Nothing  in  literature  has  a  higher  educational 
value  than  this  element  of  orderly  structure,  of 
good  "composition."  It  should  be  unobtrusively 
present  in  practically  everything  the  class  learns, 
and  should  be  deliberately  brought  to  notice,  and 
should  be  provided  for  in  everything  the  children 
produce.  It  stands  to  reason  that  the  story  is  the 
form  which  will  most  constantly  and  most  easily 
present  this  element  of  structure,  and  that  in  their 
study  of  stories  the  children  can  best  be  im- 
pressed with  a  sense  of  their  bit  of  art  as  a  whole 
made  up  of  parts.  This  aspect  of  story,  as  well 
as  the  consideration  of  plot,  incident,  and  charac- 
ter, will  receive  a  more  extended  treatment  than 
can  be  given  here,  in  the  special  chapter  on  story. 

As  to  the  smaller  elements  of  literature,  it  is 
rather  contrary  to  the  best  educational  thinking 
of  our  day  to  expect  the  elementary  child  to  show 
much  appreciation  of  them.  It  would  be  a  mis- 
take to  place  any  emphasis  in  teaching  him  upon 
delicate  or  obscure  phases  of  these  elements; 
though  there  will  be,  naturally,  within  the 
period  a  growing  fineness  of  appreciation  and 
quickness  of  perception  in  these  matters.  Among 
the  youngest  children  the  elements  to  be  empha- 
sized are  chiefly  those  concerned  with  the 
musical  effects  of  speech.  The  teacher  will 
do  everything  possible  to  develop  and  culti- 


Kinds  and  Elements  49 

vate  in  the  child  a  love  of  rhythm — the  musical 
flow  of  language,  whether  of  verse  or  prose.  In 
the  verse  he  will  try  to  awaken  an  enjoyment 
of  rhyme  and  of  meter,  of  any  specially  musical 
collocation  of  words,  of  instances  of  tone- 
color  or  other  poetic  harmony.  This  cultiva- 
tion of  the  child's  ear  for  literature  should  go  on 
through  his  whole  school  life.  It  should  be  one 
of  the  considerations  that  weigh  in  choosing  the 
material  for  his  literary  training  even  through- 
out his  college  experience,  in  order  that  his  ear 
for  musical  speech  may  grow  ever  more  subtle, 
more  responsive  to  the  delicate  and  noble  caden- 
ces of  poetry  and  of  beautiful  prose.  Beautiful 
and  musical  speech  is  the  crowning  quality  of 
literature,  and  the  final  note  of  distinction  in 
style,  and  no  amount  of  originality  in  image  or 
figure,  no  degree  of  delicate  fitness  in  word  or 
phrase,  no  perfection  of  skill  in  logical  coherence 
and  arrangement,  should  persuade  us  to  forgo  it. 
In  a  class  of  the  younger  children  the  teacher 
may  hope  to  get  attention  to  an  occasional  image 
or  larger  picture ;  he  may  even  occasionally  secure 
some  deliberate  consideration  of  a  figure.  And 
he  may  be  sure,  whether  their  interest  in  these 
minor  matters  be  steady  and  deliberate  or  not, 
that  he  is  at  least  helping  them  all  the  while  to 


50      Literature  in  the  Elementary  School 

new  and  useful  words,  and  to  a  constantly  im- 
proved sentence- form. 

As  they  grow  older,  and  capable  of  more  atten- 
tion and  patience,  they  grow  rapidly  more  able 
to  give  conscious  consideration  to  literary  details. 
The  children  of  fifth  and  sixth-grade  age  will 
linger  over  especially  beautiful  and  appropriate 
words,  will  stop  to  realize  in  detail  the  pictures, 
and  will  consider  figures  long  enough  to  appro- 
priate them  artistically.  The  normal  child  has 
an  interesting  history  with  regard  to  figures  of 
speech.  Personification  he  accepts  at  once.  In- 
deed, it  is  perhaps  not  a  figure  to  him,  but  a 
reality,  though  he  seems  to  get  out  of  it  a  con- 
scious artistic  joy.  Such  personification  as  "the 
daffodil  unties  her  yellow  bonnet"  he  can  see  and 
appreciate  as  figure.  Metaphor  is  his  native 
speech,  and,  so  long  as  it  involves  no  material 
beyond  his  power  of  realization,  he  has  no  trouble 
with  it — in  appreciating  it  or  in  producing  it. 
Simile  is  more  baffling;  it  is  easier  to  go  immedi- 
ately and  intuitively  to  the  meaning  of  a  meta- 
phor than  to  carry  in  the  mind  the  two  expressed 
sides  of  the  simile.  The  younger  children 
are  puzzled  and  confused  by  the  details  of 
a  Homeric  simile.  But  children  old  enough  to 
read  Sohrab  and  Rustum,  if  they  have  been 
taught  how  to  hold  their  minds  on  an  artistic 


Kinds  and  Elements  51 

detail,  are  willing  to  stop  and  appreciate  the  two 
groups  of  details  in  each  of  Arnold's  similes.  But 
no  elementary  child  will  make  a  Homeric,  or  in- 
deed any  simile,  except  as  a  tour  de  force.  Antith- 
esis as  a  striking  and  obvious  figure  is  easy  and 
illuminating  to  children,  and  seems  to  come  to 
them  quite  spontaneously  in  their  own  composing. 
The  more  subtle  figures  they  will  neither  appre- 
ciate nor  use  within  our  period.  The  fable  as 
allegory  and  the  more  extended  allegories,  even 
those  complex  enough  to  be  called  symbol- 
istic stories,  the  seventh  and  eighth  grades  in 
the  average  school  will  read  and  interpret 
acceptably.  On  the  whole,  we  may  expect  to 
give  most  of  the  children  some  knowledge  of  the 
literary  nature  and  function  of  simple  figures, 
and  to  awaken  in  them  an  ability  to  enjoy  and 
understand  the  figurative  and  allusive  atmosphere 
characteristic  of  literature. 

This  seems  to  be  the  appropriate  place  to 
speak  of  irony,  which,  while  not,  of  course,  a 
figure  of  speech,  but  rather  a  way  of  thinking, 
does  frequently  help  to  produce  the  allusive  and 
indirect  tone  in  literature.  It  must  be  the  art- 
playfulness  of  irony  that  tempts  most  people, 
when  they  write  for  children  or  talk  with  them, 

Z5  to  adopt  some  form  of  this  method  of  speaking. 

£   But  this  method  of  communing  with  little  peo- 


UIBRARV 

STATE  N01M41  SCHOOL 

AiUS  AND  HUME  ECONOMIC* 
SANTA  BARBARA,  CALIFORNIA 


52       Literature  in  the  Elementary  School 

pie  is  full  of  dangers;  while  a  pervading  and 
abiding  atmosphere  of  irony  is  most  unfair  to 
them.  Slow  children  are  baffled  and  stupefied  by 
it;  quick  children  all  too  soon  catch  and  adopt 
the  element  of  insincerity  underlying  it.  Never- 
theless, passages  of  ironic  intent,  together  with 
occasional  brief  bits  in  the  ironic  manner,  are 
educative,  quickening  the  children  artistically  and 
intellectually.  A  little  girl  of  five  beamed  with 
intellectual  delight  and  artistic  triumph  when  she 
said  to  her  mother:  "Now  I  can  almost  always 
tell  when  grown  people  are  speaking  irons." 

Concerning  the  whole  matter  of  wit  and 
humor  in  literature  the  same  thing  may  be  said 
that  is  said  of  irony.  Children  are  quickened 
and  stimulated  intellectually  by  frequent  calls  to 
understand  and  appreciate  passages  of  witty  and 
humorous  writing,  or  by  an  occasional  and  short 
piece  whose  whole  atmosphere  is  of  this  kind. 
But  from  the  point  of  view  of  their  literary  train- 
ing and  general  appreciation  of  art,  it  is  better  to 
awaken  in  them  and  maintain  a  serious  appre- 
ciation of  greatness  and  beauty.  Besides,  the 
child's  out-of-school  experience  may,  in  many 
communities,  be  relied  upon  to  give  him  sufficient 
contact  with  the  ironic  and  humorous  forms  of 
art,  literary  and  otherwise. 

To  sum  up,  then,  may  we  say  that  it  is  safe 


Kinds  and  Elements  53 

to  conclude  that  within  the  elementary  period  we 
will  rely  for  the  children's  literary  experience 
upon  specimens  of  the  three  species — epic,  lyric, 
fiction — introducing,  in  the  older  classes,  when 
the  conditions  seem  to  justify  it,  a  few  simple 
and  heroic  dramas,  and  perhaps  a  few  essays, 
choosing  them  from  those  that  exhibit  the  more 
direct  kind  of  humor,  that  are  objective  in  char- 
acter, or  that  serve  as  an  introduction  to  oratory 
and  eloquence? 

We  may  feel  contented  if  we  have  succeeded 
in  cultivating  an  appreciation  of  the  musical  side 
of  speech — among  the  younger  children  an  enjoy- 
ment of  the  obvious  things  of  meter  and  rhyme, 
reaching  in  the  older  children  enjoyment  of  the 
rhythm  of  prose,  and  many  of  the  more  subtle 
harmonies  of  arrangement  and  tone-color.  We 
may  hopefully  labor  to  impress  upon  them 
a  sense  of  structure,  an  appreciation  of  "com- 
position." We  may  refine  and  build  upon  their 
instinctive  love  of  story,  until  we  see  it  taking 
on  within  this  period  the  certainty  of  a  culti- 
vated taste.  We  may  develop  in  them  some 
power  to  linger  over  epithet  and  image  and  figure, 
thus  beginning  to  build  up  in  them  a  sense  of 
craftsmanship,  and  love  of  beautiful  detail, 
both  of  which  must  enter  into  one's  appreciation 
of  any  art  before  his  judgment  is  safe  and  his 


54      Literature  in  the  Elementary  School 

appreciation  satisfying.  And  the  teacher  who 
knows  how  may  hope  to  do  all  these  things  joy- 
ously and  unobtrusively,  so  that  literature  may 
remain  what  it  should  always  be — a  charming 
and  refined  variety  of  play. 


CHAPTER  IV 

STORY 

Story  is,  in  general,  the  narrative  of  a  suc- 
cession of  incidents  or  events.  It  is  a  large, 
general  form  or  device,  useful,  indeed  inevitable, 
in  all  subjects.  Like  language  itself,  story  is  a 
universal  medium,  conveying  the  facts  of  his- 
tory, of  science,  of  life.  Whenever  we  have  the 
steps  of  any  experience  arranged  according  to 
any  of  the  laws  of  subsequence  or  consequence, 
we  have  story;  such  as  the  story  of  the  dande- 
lion seed,  the  story  of  the  life  of  Mary  Stuart, 
the  story  of  the  invention  of  the  steam  engine, 
the  story  of  a  day  in  the  city.  Now,  the 
narration  of  the  events  in  mere  chronological 
sequence  is  story.  As  soon  as  they  are  arranged 
in  the  order  of  cause  and  effect — or  in  any  other 
chosen  order ;  as  soon  as  the  narrative  leads  up  to 
an  end  or  a  signal  event ;  as  soon  as  it  shows  that 
there  has  been  for  any  purpose  a  selection  and 
ordered  arrangement  of  the  steps  or  incidents, 
we  have  a  story.  The  literary  story — the  story 
which  is  art — differs  from  other  stories  in  the  fact 
that  in  it  the  principle  of  selection  and  arrange- 
ment operates  more  thoroughly  than  in  the  others. 
55 


56      Literature  in  the  Elementary  School 

A  narrative  detailing  for  technical  purposes  the 
steps  of  an  occurrence  in  nature  or  in  history  must 
follow  closely  either  the  sequence  of  time  or  the 
order  of  cause  and  effect ;  and  such  a  report  can- 
not choose  among  the  steps  or  incidents,  but  must 
as  a  matter  of  mere  fairness,  suppress  nothing 
and  heighten  nothing.  It  is  otherwise  with  the 
literary  story.  Here  the  incidents  may  be  selected 
at  the  discretion  of  the  author  and  arranged  in 
whatever  order  may  best  serve  to  produce  his 
effect;  insignificant  steps  may  be  eliminated,  cer- 
tain steps  may  be  elaborated  and  brought  into 
higher  light.  The  will  of  the  artist  and  his  artis- 
tic effect  constitute  a  force  which  may  abrogate 
the  laws  of  cause  and  effect,  or  of  precedence 
and  subsequence  in  time. 

The  interest  in  story  is  instinctive  and  uni- 
versal; the  merest  string  of  incidents  will  attract 
and  hold  attention.  Interest  and  attention  natur- 
ally increase  and  deepen  with  the  greater  organ- 
ization of  the  material.  It  is  this  principle  of 
organization  that  gives  to  literary  stories  some 
of  their  unique  and  distinctive  values  in  educa- 
tion. No  method  of  organization  but  that  of  story 
keeps  the  younger  child's  attention  long  enough 
and  closely  enough  to  carry  him  undistracted 
through  a  large  whole.  He  cannot  follow,  as  can 
his  elders,  the  flow  of  emotion  which  constitutes 


Story  57 

the  thread  of  continuity  in  a  lyric ;  he  cannot  fol- 
low a  train  of  thinking  through  an  essay;  but  he 
can  follow  the  run  of  a  narrative  through  even  a 
long  story.  This  fact  enables  us  to  put  him  satis- 
factorily and  pleasantly  into  the  presence  of  a 
large  organized  bit  of  material,  in  which  he  can 
discriminate  the  parts,  yet  which  he  can  grasp  as 
a  whole ;  which  he  can  see  as  an  entity  beginning 
somewhere,  proceeding  in  order,  reaching  an  end. 
The  temptation  to  amplify  the  statement  of 
the  influence  in  the  child's  whole  mental  experi- 
ence of  this  fostering  and  disciplining  of  his 
powers  of  attention  is  difficult  to  resist.  But  we 
will  leave  it  with  these  few  words  in  order  to 
speak  of  the  specifically  artistic  and  literary 
results  of  this  matter  of  structure  in  the  story. 
It  is  a  thing  hard  to  insist  upon  as  a  matter  of 
general  theory,  because  written  down  in  cold 
black  and  white  it  seems  to  convey  the  impression 
that  emphasis  is  placed  upon  mere  colorless  organ- 
ization; as  if  one  obliged  his  children  to  make  an 
analytical  syllabus  of  their  pleasant  tale  before 
he  regarded  it  as  taught.  But  it  is  no  such  dull 
thing.  Beauty  and  economy  of  structure  lie  upon 
the  very  surface  of  the  best  bits  of  literature,  and 
need  but  the  most  unobtrusive  reinforcement 
from  the  teacher  to  work  their  effect  of  pleasure 
and  discipline.  This  pleasure  is  an  artistic  prod- 


58      Literature  in  the  Elementary  School 

uct  which  should  expand  and  develop  with  the 
child's  reading,  until,  when  he  is  a  mature  stu- 
dent, the  formal  structure  of  poem  or  story  gives 
him  the  same  aesthetic  and  moral  satisfaction  that 
he  gets  from  a  picture  well  composed,  a  monu- 
ment well  balanced.  It  is  not  a  fancy  or  a  mere 
pretty  theory  that  a  good  story,  taught  as  a  struc- 
ture, becomes  a  norm,  a  model,  a  due  to  the  child 
in  the  preservation  of  his  own  material,  and  in 
the  arrangement  of  it  economically  and  effectively. 
His  attention  is  trained,  his  patience  is  rewarded, 
his  taste  refined,  his  judgment  exercised  and 
steadied,  his  imagination  guided  and  channeled  by 
his  contact  with  a  complete,  beautiful,  and  logical 
creation,  whose  elements  he  can  see  and  handle 
as  he  can  those  of  the  story. 

From  the  point  of  view  of  the  larger  structure 
of  the  story  its  elements  are  the  incidents.  This 
term  is  employed  in  this  chapter  rather  arbitrarily 
to  designate  those  smallest  separable  units  of 
progress  by  which  a  story  goes  forward.  It  does 
not  necessarily  designate  a  section  of  the  story 
which  records  a  happening;  the  introductory 
and  explanatory  paragraph  we  call  an  incident;  a 
paragraph  of  description  is  an  incident;  the 
separable  sections  of  the  story  as  it  moves  are  its 
incidents.  A  new  incident  begins  when  a  certain 
aspect  of  the  action  closes,  when  a  new  day  opens, 


Story  59 

a  new  person  enters,  a  change  of  scene  occurs, 
or  even  a  shift  from  dialogue  to  narration;  any 
of  these  and  many  other  things  may  cause  or 
signalize  a  new  incident.  Study  for  example, 
Grimm's  Briar-Rose,  which  divides  naturally  and 
inevitably  into  ten  separable  incidents,  and  which 
exhibits  a  beautiful  and  artistic  organization. 

A  teacher  should  master  this  aspect  of  every 
story  he  proposes  to  teach.  He  should  know  it 
intimately  as  a  series  of  incidents;  for  these  are  the 
things  he  can  manipulate  as  he  uses  the  story — in 
case  he  must  shorten  it  or  dramatize  it,  or  other- 
wise modify  it  to  suit  his  needs.  If  he  knows  how 
to  handle  incidents,  he  may  often  by  a  little  edit- 
ing eliminate  superfluous  matter  and  convert  a 
loose,  overburdened,  or  merely  long  story  into  a 
usable  bit  of  art. 

Practically  every  story  that  has  the  length  and 
dignity  to  justify  its  use  for  a  class,  gathers  its 
incidents  into  movements  that  correspond  to  the 
three  or  five  acts  of  a  drama.  There  is  something 
almost  biologically  necessary  in  at  least  three  parts 
or  movements  in  every  organized  narrative — 
Aristotle's  obvious  beginning,  middle,  and  end. 
In  a  story  it  is  but  natural  that  we  should  have 
( i )  a  section  presenting  the  people  and  their  sur- 
roundings, the  circumstances  which  call  for  or 
dictate  the  action;  (2)  the  central  event,  the  essen- 


60       Literature  in  the  Elementary  School 

tial  adventure;  (3)  the  denouement,  conclusion, 
reconciliation,  adjustment,  or  what  not.  These 
three  movements  are  beautifully  distinct  in  the 
Briar-Rose.  It  helps  to  impress  upon  the  chil- 
dren the  structure  of  the  story  if  in  the  study 
of  it  these  movements  arc  brought  to  notice — 
quietly  and  unobtrusively,  perhaps  indicated  by  a 
mere  pause  in  the  telling,  or  on  occasion,  more 
deliberately  by  some  other  means.  The  story 
should  not  be  so  handled  as  to  make  the  im- 
pression that  there  are  abrupt  gaps  between  the 
movements;  rather  these  movements  should  be 
treated  as  essential  parts  of  a  larger  composition. 
In  the  stories  of  the  dramas  the  children  may 
study,  and  in  all  such  stories  as  they  themselves 
dramatize,  they  will  inevitably  see  that  these 
stages  or  movements  are  essential  and  vital,  dic- 
tating the  organization  of  the  material  into  acts. 

Within  the  arrangement  of  the  story  as  inci- 
dents and  movements  lies  a  deeper  kind  of  organ- 
ization which  exhibits  many  kinds  and  degrees  of 
complexity.  A  story  may  be  a  run  of  inci- 
dents that  report  mere  activity.  So  deep  and 
eager  is  the  hunger  for  story,  so  unfailing  is  the 
primitive  epic  interest,  that  almost  anybody's  at- 
tention may  be  held  for  a  long  while  by  the  recital 
of  the  merely  juxtaposed  incidents  that  constitute 
this  story  of  activity.  But  there  is  no  art  in  this ; 


Story  61 

it  is  mere  story-stuff,  not  o  story.  Under  the 
manipulation  of  the  literary  artist,  the  tale-teller, 
it  takes  shape,  shifts  its  incidents  about,  ar- 
ranges its  stages  and  emerges  a  created  and 
organic  thing,  telling  now  of  action,  not  of 
activity.  It  may  be  a  long  narrative,  or  it 
may  be  a  mere  anecdote.  But  it  has  a  purpose 
and  a  plan,  and  it  reaches  an  end.  This  straight- 
forward, single-minded  tale  does  not,  however, 
give  complete  and  final  satisfaction.  In  the  first 
place,  it  does  not  represent  life,  which  never  pro- 
ceeds far  by  single,  uninterrupted  threads ;  events 
are  interlinked  and  complicated,  modified  and 
diverted  in  many  directions.  In  the  second  place, 
it  does  not  satisfy  the  instinct  of  workmanship  in 
the  artist.  Even  the  most  primitive  artist,  the 
very  folk  itself,  has  this  instinct  of  craftsmanship 
which  expresses  itself  in  the  elaboration  and  en- 
richment of  its  product.  In  story  this  instinct 
displays  itself  in  the  more  skilful  arrangement 
of  the  incidents,  looking  ever  to  the  heightening 
and  deepening  of  effect,  in  the  enrichment  of  the 
presentation  by  weaving  together  more  than  one 
action  into  a  more  and  more  complex  whole.  Such 
increased  elaboration,  and  more  conscious  organ- 
ization either  in  the  arrangement  of  the  incidents 
of  a  single  action,  or  in  the  interweaving  of  two 
or  more  actions,  gives  the  story  a  plot. 


62      Literature  in  the  Elementary  School 

It  is  from  the  use  of  stories  elaborate  enough 
and  developed  enough  to  have  a  plot  that  genuine 
disciplinary  value  may  be  expected.  The  merely 
chaotic  or  haphazard  run  of  incidents  may  amuse 
and  interest  the  children,  but  it  yields  nothing  of 
artistic  training.  Two  very  simple  specimens  (use- 
ful for  so  many  purposes)  will  illustrate  the  point. 
Take  the  story  adumbrated  in  The  House  That 
Jack  Built.  This  is  a  series  of  incidents  linked 
together  in  the  accumulative  fashion,  but  proceed- 
ing in  a  straight  line  and  and  stopping  short  off 
without  issue  or  event.  Compare  it  with  the 
equally  primitive  accumulative  tale  of  The  Old 
Woman  Who  Found  the  Sixpence,  from  which 
invaluable  tale  one  can  exemplify  all  the  main 
devices  of  successful  plot-making;  the  incidents 
are  arranged  in  a  charming  pattern,  so  that  the 
action  rises  to  a  summit,  descends  to  an  end,  and 
produces  an  effect;  there  is  the  proper  proper-  J 
tion  of  involution  (save  the  mark!),  of  the  mak- 
ing of  difficulties,  stating  the  problem,  awakening 
our  sympathies;  this  is  followed  by  the  due  pro- 
cess of  resolution,  unraveling  the  difficulties,  with 
the  final  restoration  of  the  action  to  the  normal 
level  with  the  purpose  of  the  story  achieved.  It 
is  this  kind  of  story  that  adds  to  interest  and 
amusement  that  additional  charm  of  artistic  struc- 


Story  63 

ture   which   distinguishes   literature   from   mere 
writing. 

Now,  while  it  is  true  that  a  symmetrical  plot 
constitutes  in  part  the  educational  value  of  a  story, 
it  is  quite  obvious  to  those  who  know  both  chil- 
dren and  stories  that  intricate  and  elaborate  plots 
should  not  be  given  to  folks  in  the  elementary 
classes.  A  story  in  which  the  threads  of  the  plot 
are  many  or  disparate,  or  one  in  which  the  actions 
must  be  often,  or  for  any  long  while,  kept  sepa- 
rate, confuses  rather  than  trains  the  young  chil- 
dren. Better  for  them  are  those  stories  whose 
plots  are  open  and  simple,  where  the  actions  of  the 
interlinked  threads  coincide  as  much  as  possible. 
Certain  traditional  plot  devices  are  out  of  place 
in  a  story  chosen  for  these  children;  suspense 
and  mystification,  for  example,  those  devices 
so  dear  in  their  myriad  forms  to  the  cheap  and 
sensational  novelist,  and  so  indispensable  to 
the  interest  of  the  uncultivated  reader,  are  not 
desirable  in  the  children's  class.  Their  inter- 
est needs  no  such  stimulus ;  their  attention  should 
not  be  subjected  to  the  strain,  nor  their  nerves  to 
the  shock,  of  a  sustained  suspense  with  its  conse- 
quent surprise.  Rather,  their  story  should  move 
openly  and  directly,  depending  for  its  power  upon 
the  skilful  interrelation  of  its  interests,  yielding 
the  pleasure  of  recognition  and  sympathy,  so  much 


64       Literature  in  the  Elementary  School 

more  artistic  and  disciplinary  than  the  pleasure  of 
surprise.  For  this  reason  plots  of  the  type  of 
Shakespeare's  great  plots,  of  the  type  of  Perratilt's 
Cinderella,  in  which  the  reader  is  in  the  confidence 
of  the  author  from  the  beginning,  are  to  be 
desired  for  the  little  people.  If  for  any  reason 
it  seems  well  to  tell  to  the  younger  children  a 
long  story  built  upon  suspense  and  surprise,  it  is 
generally  well  to  let  them  know  very  soon  the 
issue  of  affairs — the  ultimate  disaster  or  recon- 
ciliation— so  that  they  may  be  free  from  anxiety 
and  able  to  attend  to  the  more  real  matter  of  the 
story  as  it  proceeds.  This  teaching  applies  to  the 
younger  children;  as  they  grow  older,  they 
become  able  to  get  desirable  intellectual  experi- 
ence out  of  a  good  detective  story,  or  one  with  a 
fairly  deep  mystification  in  it,  like  Treasure 
Island.  The  older  children,  too,  may  profitably 
handle  a  more  intricate  plot — Ivanhoe  with  its 
four  threads  of  interest  and  activity,  The  Mer- 
chant of  Venice  with  the  action  shifting  about 
from  scene  to  scene  among  its  various  groups. 

By  handling  a  plot  as  a  matter  of  literary 
study  we  mean,  examining  it  from  these  points  of 
view. 

1.  What  are  the  difficulties  set  up? 

2.  By  what  devices  are  the  difficulties  consti- 


Story  65 

tuted — conspiracy,    intrigue,    disguise,    quarrel 
blood-feud,  race-hatred,  etc.,  etc.  ? 

3.  How  are  the  difficulties  removed? 

4.  How  many  threads  of  interest  has  the  plot  ? 

5.  How   are   they   linked   together  or   inter- 
woven ? 

6.  How  logical  and  how  fair  is  the  outcome? 
Other  questions  to  be  considered  in  studying 

the  plot  will  arise  in  the  study  of  an  actual  story 
with  an  actual  class. 

Of  fundamental  interest  in  the  story  are  the 
persons  or  characters,  and  it  is  of  prime  impor- 
tance that  teachers — be  they  mothers  or  masters 
— should  know  how  to  educate  the  children  in 
this  matter. 

From  one  point  of  view — that  of  the 
activities  of  the  story,  in  which  the  younger 
children  are  mainly  interested — there  are  two 
kinds  of  persons :  those  who  do  things;  those  who 
receive  things,  or  for  whose  sake,  or  merely  in 
whose  presence,  things  are  done.  The  former  are 
the  agents — the  pushing,  active  adventurous  per- 
sons, who,  good  or  ill,  make  things  happen;  the 
latter  are  often  mere  figures,  important  and  per- 
haps beautiful,  put  into  the  story  to  represent 
institutions  or  ideas — like  the  father  of  Cinderella, 
who  is  merely  an  institutional  father ;  or  they  are 
devices  for  getting  on  with  the  plot,  like  the  fairy 


66      Literature  in  the  Elementary  School 

godmother;  or  they  are  the  rewards  of  endeavor, 
like  the  King's  daughter  given  in  marriage  in 
many  a  folk-tale.  From  another  point  of  view, 
which  regards  the  actors  in  the  story,  not  as  per- 
sons, but  as  characters,  they  may  be  divided  into 
two  types;  those  who  are  fixed,  static,  from  the 
beginning — who  come  into  the  story  fully  equip- 
ped, and  do  not  change  at  all  within  its  limits; 
those  who  change  or  develop  under  the  influ- 
ence of  others  and  of  their  experiences. 

In  the  study  of  characters  more  than  in  any 
other  aspect  of  story,  we  must  allow  for  the 
growth  of  the  children  within  the  elementary 
period.  The  youngest  children  are  prepared  to 
appreciate  the  activities  of  people,  and  are  inter- 
ested in  the  active  persons,  and  by  transfer  of 
sympathy,  in  the  persons  for  whose  sake  the  deeds 
are  done.  Their  typical  readiness  in  reading 
character  does  not  fail  them  when  the  character 
has  been  transferred  to  literature.  They  are  quick 
to  discriminate  the  main  lines  and  the  distinguish- 
ing traits  of  personality.  They  need  only  a  few 
facts  and  signs.  The  merest  nursery  child  will  be 
found  to  have  settled  views  of  the  general  charac- 
ter of  Little  Boy  Blue  and  Jack  Horner,  built  upon 
the  slender  but  significant  data  of  the  rhymes. 
But  the  children  I  have  known  have  not,  up  to  the 
sixth  grade,  followed  with  much  interest  or 


Story  67 

profit  any  but  the  slightest  and  simplest  charac- 
ter progression  or  modification.  They  are  satis- 
fied that  the  wicked  should  become  more  and  more 
wicked,  to  their  final  undoing;  that  the  stupid 
become  stupider,  to  their  ultimate  extinction;  but 
any  evolution  of  character  other  than  this  cumu- 
lative one,  any  transformation  more  subtle  than 
the  conversion  of  Cinderella's  sisters,  or  more 
delicate  than  the  degeneration  of  Struwelpeter, 
finds  them  languid. 

From  these  facts  the  wise  teacher  takes  his 
hints  and  builds  his  plans.  He  will  give  these 
younger  children  very  little  of  what  is  known  in 
mature  classes  as  character-study — which  so  easily 
in  these  same  older  classes,  degenerates  into  gossip 
and  the  merely  idle  or  pernicious  attributing  of 
motives.  He  will  help  the  child,  on  the  whole, 
to  judge  from  his  deeds  whether  a  man  is  good  or 
bad,  helpful  or  hindering.  But  no  deed  is  all  mere 
activity;  back  of  it  lie  motives  and  passions,  and 
beyond  it  lie  moral  and  social  results.  There  is  a 
name  for  Little  Boy  Blue's  failure  in  duty,  and 
for  Jack  Horner's  sel f -approval ;  and  these 
qualities  have  manifestations  in  forms  and  cir- 
cumstances other  than  those  of  these  two  heroes. 
To  these  simple  deed-inspiring  motives  and  pas- 
sions, and  to  their  effects  on  the  persons  them- 
selves, the  teacher  must  see  that  the  children's 


68       Literature  in  the  Elementary  School 

attention  is  directed ;  so  that,  as  he  builds  up  stroke 
by  stroke  the  image  of  his  hero  and  model,  the 
features  that  he  gets  from  literature  at  least  may 
be  supported  by  his  judgment. 

Of  course,  as  they  advance  the  children 
awaken,  or  should  be  awakened,  to  some  of  the 
more  delicate  discriminations  of  motive  and 
action — to  the  conception  of  a  man  who  is  mixed 
good  and  bad ;  and  to  a  realization  of  a  character 
changed  under  our  eyes  by  some  experience  or  by 
the  influence  of  another  person;  to  some  esti- 
mate of  the  farther-reaching  consequences  of  the 
deeds  we  witness  in  our  story.  And  before  they 
have  finally  passed  out  of  the  elementary  grades, 
we  may  expect  them  to  be  able  to  consider  the 
problems  and  contradictions  that  lie,  for  example, 
in  the  character  of  Shylock;  they  could  see  his 
fundamental  passions — race-hatred,  avarice ;  they 
could  estimate  his  motives — personal  dislike  of 
the  merchant,  revenge  of  his  own  wrongs  and 
loneliness ;  they  could  try  to  estimate  the  effect  of 
his  character  and  conduct  on  the  fortunes  and 
characters  of  the  whole  group,  and  finally  upon 
his  own  fortunes.  They  might,  in  the  same  gen- 
eral and  simple  way,  follow  the  spiritual  strug- 
gles of  Brutus:  his  great  underlying  passions — 
patriotism  and  love  of  friend ;  his  immediate 
motives  to  save  his  country ;  the  effect  of  his  deed ; 


Story  69 

the  telling  contrasts  between  him  and  Cassius, 
him  and  Mark  Antony. 

The  study  of  character  in  these  broader  lines 
— the  fundamental  qualities  or  passions,  the  mo- 
tives that  bring  about  the  action,  the  obvious 
results  in  personal  and  social  ways  of  these 
actions — constitutes  the  utmost  we  should  try  to 
do  in  this  direction,  leaving  for  a  later  period, 
when  the  children's  social  interests  are  broadened, 
and  when  they  have  developed  from  within  a 
deeper  sense  of  moral  experience,  the  more  deli- 
cate and  difficult  matters  of  the  evolution  and 
interplay  of  character. 

Of  equal  importance  in  a  story  with  the  run  of 
events  or  plot,  and  with  the  persons  or  characters, 
is  this  third  thing — the  outcome  or  issue.  It  is 
surely  wise  to  follow,  for  the  younger  children, 
the  hint  given  by  their  own  tastes  and  by  the 
primitive  story-tellers,  to  the  extent  of  giving 
them  prevailingly  such  stories  as  have  a  distinct 
and  signal  outcome,  leaving  the  uncertainties  and 
inconclusions  of  a  thoroughgoing  realism  for  a 
much  later  period.  It  is  best,  on  the  whole,  that 
the  children  see  the  issues  of  their  story  settled, 
the  actions  passing  on  to  accomplishment — this 
for  the  artistic  as  well  as  for  the  moral  effect 
of  the  tale.  It  enables  them  to  regard  it  as  a 
finished  whole,  having  unity  and  completeness; 


yo      Literature  in  the  Elementary  School 

and  it  throws  light  on  all  the  events  and  persons 
in  the  story,  to  see  how  things  come  out  in  the  end. 

The  outcome  or  issue  can  be  looked  at  from 
one  or  the  other,  sometimes  from  both,  of  two 
points  of  view;  as  a  denouement  or  round-up  of 
the  particular  story  in  hand ;  or  as  a  solution  of  a 
human  problem,  a  universal  situation.  The  entirely 
satisfying  denouement  of  The  Old  Woman  Who 
Found  the  Sixpence,  the  removal  of  her  many 
difficulties,  goes  no  farther  than  getting  her  home 
that  night;  though,  of  course,  a  mature  mind  of 
mystic  tendencies  may  see  in  it  a  triumph  of 
social  co-operation.  It  will  be  enough  for  the 
third  grade  to  feel  a  certain  luxurious  physical 
well-being,  arising  from  the  final  safe  arrival  of 
the  old  woman  and  the  pig  that  night.  But  in  the 
exquisite  little  novella  of  Beauty  and  the  Beast 
the  outcome  of  the  story  is  not  only  a  settlement 
of  the  affairs  of  the  persons  in  whom  we  are  inter- 
ested, but  it  is  also  a  comment  on  life  of  univer- 
sal application — that  in  a  world  where  things  go 
as  they  should,  good,  gentle,  and  pretty  persons 
are  rewarded  with  their  hearts'  desire,  while  rude, 
haughty,  and  cruel  persons  are  either  punished 
or  left  entirely  out  in  the  award  of  good  things. 

This  sort  of  ending,  conclusive  and  fortu- 
nate, the  children  and  the  primitive  story-makers 
always  prefer;  any  other  kind  of  ending  must 


Story  71 

be  prepared  for  and  defended.  The  younger  chil- 
dren will  not  accept  tragedies;  the  older  ones 
accept  them  with  difficulty.  Death  and  failure 
are  not  realizable  to  them.  It  may  be  true,  as 
Wordsworth  undoubtedly  meant  us  to  see  in  his 
little  cottage-girl  in  "We  Are  Seven,"  that  this 
refusal  to  believe  in  death  is  due  to  some  super- 
nal truth  of  vision  which  we,  their  elders, 
seeing  only  by  the  light  of  common  day,  have  lost. 

But  we  all  know  that  tragedy  is  sometimes  the 
way  of  life,  and  often  the  way  of  art,  being 
ineradicably  written  in  the  events  of  many  of  the 
world's  great  stories.  It  would  be  an  ethical  and 
artistic  folly  to  substitute  a  fortunate  ending  in 
these  stories — quite  as  unpardonable  in  the  tragic 
folk  tale  as  in  King  Lear  or  in  one  of  the  Greek 
tragedies. 

It  is  well  to  study  with  the  children  occasion- 
ally a  tragic  tale,  to  give  them  that  sort  of  artis- 
tic experience  and  to  secure  the  exercise  of 
the  tender  sides  of  sympathy  and  pity.  But 
because  they  are  not  provided  by  their  experience 
with  reasons  for  expecting  and  accepting  tragedy 
they  should  be  prepared  for  the  calamity  and  led 
to  justify  and  accept  it — not  as  a  visitation  of 
justice,  for  a  true  tragedy  is  never  of  that  kind 
— but  as  a  beautiful  pathos  or  grief.  To  this 
end  one  would  choose  his  tragic  tale  among  those 


72      Literature  in  the  Elementary  School 

which  have  disaster  inwoven  from  the  begin- 
ning, so  that  the  class  may  not  have  the  shock 
of  surprise  and  the  feeling  of  resentment  that 
come  of  an  unexpected  and  avoidable  catas- 
trophe. Take  for  example,  the  folk-tale  of  Little 
Red  Riding-Hood,  a  poor  story  for  a  class  in 
any  form,  but  poor  as  a  tragedy  because  there  is 
nothing  in  the  events  to  warn  them  of  the  tragic 
end.  To  be  sure  there  is  the  treacherous  wolf, 
but  he  is  stupid  and  should  by  rights  be  defeated 
and  outwitted;  it  is  simply  preposterous,  in  the 
code  of  childhood,  that  he  should  triumph.  This 
lack  of  the  inevitable  and  necessary  element  in 
the  disaster  is  doubtless  what  tempted  the  folk 
themselves  to  divert  it  by  a  denouement,  possibly 
reminiscent  of  certain  mythical  stories — the 
recovery  of  the  maiden  from  the  wolf's  stomach, 
which  by  its  improbability  and  grotesquerie 
tempts  the  skepticism  of  the  class,  however 
young.  As  an  example  of  the  other  sort, 
consider  the  old  ballad  long  ago  adopted  as  a 
nursery  tale — The  Babes  in  the  Wood,  which 
carries  in  its  very  nature  and  in  every  incident 
the  prophecy  of  tragedy;  so  that,  however 
grievous  the  calamity  may  be,  it  does  not 
come  upon  us  with  the  additional  shock  of 
surprise  and  the  additional  injury  of  unreason- 
ableness. This  kind  of  story  accomplishes  the 


Story  73 

result  of  discharging  the  tender  emotions  without 
complicating  them  too  deeply  with  anger  and 
revenge. 

But,  on  the  whole,  the  stories  taught  the  ele- 
mentary class  should  be  those  that  end  conclu- 
sively and  fortunately.  This  principle  not  only 
matches  and  satisfies  the  child's  taste,  but  it  is  in 
entire  consonance  with  the  principles  of  his  pro- 
cedure in  other  things — it  grows  out  of  the 
method  of  affirmation  and  inclusion,  regarding 
elimination  and  denial  as  useful  in  a  much  later 
period  of  his  education. 

As  to  the  way  in  which  the  conclusion  is 
brought  to  pass,  there  is  to  the  child  and  to  the 
childlike  mind,  in  literature  as  in  life,  something 
eminently  satisfying  in  poetic  justice.  Legal  justice 
is  cold  and  formal  to  them,  except  indeed  in  those 
frequent  cases  in  which  it  is  a  vehicle  of  ven- 
geance. Besides,  it  seems  to  produce  an  effect 
really  alien  to  the  cause;  as  in  the  penalties  of 
the  sufferers  in  the  Inferno,  the  inevitableness 
of  the  effect  is  obscured  by  the  many  complex 
stages  that  intervene  between  it  and  the  cause. 
Logical  justice — the  natural,  uninterrupted  work- 
ing of  the  forces  and  motives  to  a  conclusion,  or 
to  their  absorption  into  a  new  combination — is 
both  too  slow  and  not  striking  enough.  Besides, 
logical  justice,  working  in  its  impersonal,  undis- 


74      Literature  in  the  Elementary  School 

criminating  way,  is  too  likely  to  hurt  someon< 
in  the  piece  whom  we  love,  or  to  spare  somebodj 
we  hate.  In  short,  your  elementary  class  demand 
poetic  justice — demands  it  strong  and  desire; 
it  quick.  Now,  poetic  justice  is,  on  the  whole 
the  way  of  art,  until  we  come  practically  to  th< 
realistic  art  of  our  own  generation.  It  tends  tc 
secure  completeness  and  unity.  As  a  matter  ol 
fact,  in  practically  every  short  and  completec 
story  of  the  kind  we  choose  for  children  the  enc 
is  precipitated  and  adjusted  by  the  operation  oi 
poetic  justice. 

One  would  be  blind  indeed  who  was  unawan 
of  the  fact  that  precisely  here  lies  one  of  the 
dangers  of  the  training  in  literature.  It  is  this 
that  tends  to  give  the  mind  that  has  had  toe 
large  a  diet  of  literature,  or  to  which  literature 
has  been  unwisely  administered,  a  distorted  vie^ 
of  life,  obscuring  its  vision  with  sentimental  it) 
and  unreality.  To  guard  against  these  effects 
we  should  see  to  it  that  the  children  do  not  have 
an  unduly  large  amount  of  literature;  and  we 
should  select  those  stories  in  which  the  operation 
of  poetic  justice  is  as  little  misleading  as  possible. 
Poetic  justice  may  be,  and  usually  is,  an  ideal,  an 
artistic  distribution  of  rewards  and  punishments; 
but  it  need  not  be  a  haphazard  and  lawless  dis- 
tribution. There  is  an  artistic  flaw  in  a  story  in 


Story  75 

which  the  rewards  go  to  a  person  who  has  not 
legitimately  awakened  our  sympathies;  it  is  not 
safe  to  say  that  the  reward  should  go  to  him 
who  has  deserved  it,  for  in  some  of  the  most 
acceptable  children's  stories  sympathy  sets  aside 
deserving — The  Musicians  of  Bremen,  for 
example.  We  are  satisfied  with  the  success  of 
the  musicians,  because,  being  innocent  and  perse- 
cuted, they  have  gained  our  sympathy,  and  are 
therefore  in  the  line  for  reward.  But  the  young- 
est child  whom  I  have  tested  on  this  point  dis- 
approves the  outcome  of  the  folk-tale  of  "Lazy 
Jack"  (Joseph  Jacob's  English  Fairy  Tales),  in 
which  a  noodle  whose  stupidity  has  caused  a 
king's  daughter,  previously  dumb,  to  laugh,  and 
so  to  gain  her  voice,  is  rewarded  by  being  mar- 
ried to  the  restored  princess.  It  is  not  difficult 
to  avoid  those  stories  in  which  poetic  justice  is 
perverted  justice. 

And  then,  in  the  long  run,  when  we  have 
studied  many  stories  and  fitted  the  literary 
stories  in  with  history  and  the  observation  of  life, 
we  can  counteract  any  effect  of  unreality  we  may 
suspect,  by  placing  the  rewards  and  punishments 
in  their  proper  places  and  classes — translating 
them,  as  it  were,  into  terms  of  experience.  The 
fairy-tale  may  say  in  effect:  "Be  good  and 
gentle  and  pretty,  and  you  will  marry  a  prince," 


76      Literature  in  the  Elementary  School 

or,  "If  you  are  mean  and  spiteful,  you  will  be 
transformed  into  a  toad ;"  but  it  is  not  so  difficult 
to  convert  these  propositions  into  terms  that  have 
a  reality  for  the  third  grade,  so  that  marrying  a 
prince  and  being  turned  into  a  toad  take  their 
places  as  typical  or  symbolistic  rewards  and  pun- 
ishments. 


CHAPTER  V 

THE  CHOICE  OF  STORIES 

As  a  summary  and  by  way  of  applying  the 
facts,  principles,  and  theories  discussed  in  the 
foregoing  chapter,  let  us  try  to  decide  what  con- 
stitutes a  good  story  to  study  with  a  class  of  chil- 
dren under  thirteen  years  of  age.  Not  to  be 
aware  of  the  critical  pitfalls  that  yawn  for  one 
who  would  say  what  constitutes  a  good  story  for 
any  purpose,  would  be  entirely  too  naive;  and 
they  beset  the  path  of  him  who  would  choose  a 
fairy-tale  quite  as  thickly  as  that  of  the  critic  of 
mature  masterpieces.  But  many  of  these  pitfalls 
may  be  avoided  if  one  narrows  his  path  and 
walks  circumspectly  in  it.  In  the  present- discus- 
sion the  path  is  narrowed  by  two  considerations. 

First,  we  will  leave  out  of  the  discussion  mat- 
ters of  mere  personal  taste  and  instinctive  feeling 
— that  region  in  which  impressionism  and  ama- 
teur criticism  flourish,  confining  it  as  closely  as 
may  be  to  those  matters  that  yield  to  judgment, 
and  that  are,  as  nearly  as  possible,  matters  of 
fact.  There  is  about  every  bit  of  literature  a 
sphere  in  which  the  individual  taste  is  sole  arbiter. 
One  man's  meat  is  here  another  man's  poison. 

77 


78      Literature  in  the  Elementary  School 

The  merest  lay  reader  here  makes  up  his  mind: 
"I  like  it,"  "I  like  it  not;"  and  there  is  no  appeal 
from  these  judgments,  and  no  way  of  modify- 
ing them  short  of  a  complete  training  in  criti- 
cism, or  a  complete  remaking  of  the  reader's 
experience.  It  is.  quite  true  that  the  region  in 

"which  these  differences  lie  may  be  greatly  reduced 
by  a  knowledge  of  a  few  fundamental  critical 

principles,  and  by  a  mere  suppression  of  prejudices 
and  sentimentalities.  But  in  the  last  analysis  there 
always  remains  a  margin,  a  border  of  this  every 
man's  territory.  If  the  bit  of  literature  be  a 
story,  it  is  likely  to  be  matters  of  character- 
growth,  motives  of  conduct,  interplay  of  per- 
sonal influence,  social,  philosophical,  and  ethi- 
cal interpretation  and  influence,  that  lie  within 
this  region  and  are  subjects  of  disagreement  and 
uncertainty.  Here  lies,  too,  that  more  or  less 
elusive,  but  very  real,  thing  that  belongs  to  every 
bit  of  literature — what  we  call  "charm."  This 
may  be  a  matter  of  structure,  of  style,  even  of 
vocabulary,  of  persons,  of  furniture,  of  archi- 
tecture or  other  mere  accessories — of  geogra- 
phy, of  the  temperament  of  the  reader,  a 
combination  of  all  these  or  of  any  number  of 
them,  or  of  other  things  too  numerous  or  too 
elusive  to  be  named.  Every  good  story  has  it,  or 
gets  it  as  soon  as  a  sincere  and  sympathetic  reader 


The  Choice  of  Stories  79 

learns  how  to  read  it.  If  one  should  ever  find 
a  story  which  after  repeated  readings  develops 
nothing  of  this  most  essential  and  intangible 
quality  of  charm,  let  him  not  try  to  teach  it. 
Either  it  is  not  a  good  story,  or  he  has  no  tem- 
perament for  art. 

But,  however  interesting  these  matters  may 
be  to  readers  of  the  gentle  guild,  and  to  the 
impressionist  critic,  they  do  not  carry  us  far 
upon  our  practical  educational  choice.  This  must 
be  guided  by  a  study  of  those  aspects  and  ele- 
ments of  story  which  yield  to  plain  observation; 
which,  however  artistic,  are  yet  amenable  to 
judgment,  and  may  therefore  be  impersonally  and 
unemotionally  discussed — such  as  the  structure 
of  the  story,  its  use  of  incident,  its  movement, 
its  plot,  its  outcome,  the  fitness  of  the  whole  for 
the  training  and  best  amusement  of  the  children. 

In  the  second  place,  we  limit  and  define  our 
discussion,  if  another  reminder  of  this  important 
fact  may  be  allowed,  by  the  determination  to 
discuss,  not  the  art  of  literature,  not  all  or  any 
literature,  not  all  literature  for  children,  but  such 
literature  as  it  may  be  found  expedient  and 
desirable  to  give  to  a  class  of  children. 

i.  In  order  to  get  it  into  the  summary,  it  hav- 
ing been  sufficiently  amplified  in  a  previous  chap- 
ter, and  being  indeed,  self-evident,  we  will  say 


8o      Literature  in  the  Elementary  School 

again  that  a  story,  good  to  teach  in  class  should 
be  one  whose  material  corresponds  to  the  needs 
and  tastes  of  the  children.  The  experiences  por- 
trayed should  be,  not  necessarily  those  that  they 
have  had,  but  such  as  they  can  conceive  and 
imaginatively  appropriate,  or  such  as  they  might 
safely  experience.  And  since  children  of  this 
age  are  living,  or  ought  to  be  encouraged  to  live, 
active,  achieving  lives,  and  are  not,  or  ought  not 
to  be,  introspective  or  too  meditative;  since  they 
know  little  or  nothing  of  intricate  social  compli- 
cations or  psychic  experience,  and  we  do  not 
desire  that  they  should,  we  will  choose  their  liter- 
ature with  these  things  in  mind.  We  may  safely 
say  that  there  should  be  nothing  reflected  in  his 
story  which  the  inquisitive  child  may  not  probe 
to  the  very  bottom  without  coming  upon  knowl- 
edge too  mature  for  him.  This  must  be  recon- 
ciled with  the  fact  that  one  of  the  valuable  ser- 
vices of  literature  is  to  forestall  experience  and 
to  supplement  it.  The  reconciliation  is  not  diffi- 
cult to  make  when  once  the  teacher  has  grasped 
the  principle  of  fitness  and  really  walks  in  the 
light  of  what  he  may  easily  know  about  the 
nature  of  children. 

r~2T'.  The  larger  number  of  their  stories  should 
be  of  things  happening,  of  achievement,  of  epic, 
objective  activity.  Single  children  should  often 


The  Choice  of  Stories  81 

have  a  quiet,  idyllic  story  to  read.  The  class 
should  occasionally  have  such  a  story  or  poem  to 
consider  and  should  be  carefully  guided  to  the 
enjoyment  of  it.  But  for  the  class  in  the 
larger  amount  of  its  work  we  will  choose  stories 
of  action,  as  corresponding  most  nearly  to  the 
experience  and  interest  of  the  children,  as  har- 
monizing most  completely  with  the  character  of 
their  other  disciplines,  as  serving  best  to  create  an 
atmosphere  of  artistic  rapport  in  any  group  large 
enough  to  compose  a  class,  while  they  serve 
equally  well  with  other  stories  to  effect  those 
other  aspects  of  literary  training  which  we  desire. 
However,  all  persons  who  choose  and  write 
stories  for  children  should  suspect  themselves 
in  regard  to  this  matter  of  activity.  When 
we  say  that  these  stories  should  contain  much 
activity  and  should  move  forward  chiefly  by 
the  method  of  adventure,  we  do  not  mean  that 
there  should  be  unlimited  or  superfluous  activity. 
The  two  marks  of  the  sensational  story  are  too 
much  activity,  or  merely  miscellaneous  activity, 
and  activities  unnecessarily  and  unnaturally 
heightened  and  spiced.  It  is  not  difficult  to  test 
our  stories  on  either  of  these  points.  A  good 
story  has  a  central  action  to  be  accomplished; 
toward  this  many  minor  activities  co-operate; 
there  should  be  enough  of  these  to  accomplish 


82      Literature  in  the  Elementary  School 

the  result,  but  there  should  be  economy  of  inven- 
tion and  skill  in  arrangement,  so  that  one  does 
not  feel  that  there  has  been  a  waste  of  material 
nor  a  bid  for  overstimulated  interest.  The 
danger  to  the  child's  culture,  artistic,  intel- 
lectual, and  moral,  of  the  ordinary  juveniles  lies 
just  here,  the  heaping-up  of  sensations,  the  effort 
to  provide  a  thrill  for  every  page,  throws  the 
story  out  of  balance,  strains  the  child's  nerves, 
and  helps  to  produce  a  depraved  taste. 

3.  To  bear  the  strain  of  class  use  the  story 
should  present  a  sound  and  beautiful  organiza- 
tion. _  This  plea  for  a  good  and  trustworthy 
structure  should  not  be  mistaken  for  a  plea  for  a 
formal  and  artificial  use  of  a  story.  It  is  rather 
an  appeal  for  the  use  of  the  logical  and  rational 
side  of  literature — an  urgency  that  we  bring  into 
the  training  of  the  children  the  plain  and  funda- 
mental matters  of  art-form  that  the  story  exhibits, 
at  the  same  time  that  we  get  out  of  it  the  intel- 
lectual value  it  has  for  the  class.  If  it  be  a  short 
story,  it  should  go  to  its  climax  by  a  direct  and 
logical  path,  and  close  when  its  effect  is  produced. 
If  it  be  a  longer  story,  it  should  have  that  arrange- 
ment of  details  and  parts  that  corresponds  to  the 
movements  of  the  action,  and  that  serves  to  get 
the  material  before  us  in  the  most  effective  and 
economical  way. 


The  Choice  of  Stories  83 

Stories  that  are  elaborate  enough  to  have  a 
genuine  plot  are  desirable  for  all  classes  except 
perhaps  the  very  youngest.  It  is  not  necessary  to 
say  again,  except  by  way  of  an  item  in  the  sum- 
mary, that  the  plot  should  be  simple  and  easy  to 
see  through,  containing  very  little  of  the  element 
of  suspense,  and  only  a  legitimate  amount  of  the 
element  of  surprise.  Some  more  elaborate  plots, 
with  more  mystification  in  them,  are  intel- 
lectually stimulating  to  the  oldest  grades,  and 
create  an  interest  of  curiosity.  But  all  teachers 
should  learn  to  regard  this  stimulus  as  a  mere 
by-product  of  literary  study,  and  this  curiosity 
as  a  merely  adventitious  ally. 

4.  Clearly  connected  with  the  matter  of  good 
and  sufficient  structure  is  that  of  economy  of 
incident.  A  story  which  displays  a  profusion  of 
details  may  be  interesting,  and  under  certain 
circumstances  valuable,  to  a  child.  But  for 
the  class  that  is  a  better  story  which  uses 
just  those  incidents  essential  to  the  produc- 
tion of  its  effect.  Compare  our  old  friend,  Per- 
rault's  Cinderella,  in  this  matter  with  Grimm's. 
It  needs  but  two  nights  at  the  ball — one 
when  the  maiden  remembers  the  godmother's 
injunction,  and  one  when  she  forgets  it.  Grimm's 
version  gives  us  three  nights,  and  fills  the  story 
with  all  manner  of  irrelevant  details,  which  indi- 


84      Literature  in  the  Elementary  School 

cate,  indeed,  the  prodigal  wealth  of  the  folk- 
mind  and  the  unbounded  interest  of  the  folk- 
audience;  but  they  show  no  superintendence  of 
the  folk-artist. 

Of  course,  when  one  is  judging  a  story  from 
this  point  of  view,  he  must  take  into  account  the 
effect  to  be  produced  before  he  pronounces  as  to 
the  sufficiency  or  superfluity  of  the  incidents. 
There  must  always  be  enough  to  be  convincing, 
to  give  to  the  story  the  atmosphere  of  veri- 
similitude, and  to  justify  and  reward  our  interest 
in  the  affairs  of  the  persons.  In  Andersen's  The 
Ugly  Duckling  he  needs  to  produce  the  effect  of 
lapse  of  time,  the  experience  of  many  vicissi- 
tudes, and  the  repeated  refusals  of  the  world  to 
receive  his  genius;  every  incident  then,  though 
it  may  to  some  extent  reproduce  a  previous  one, 
is  valuable  as  contributing  to  the  effect. 

fQ  As  a  part  of  the  artistic  economy  of  the 
story,  it  should  have  a  close  unity: — closer  than 
we  would  demand  of  a  story  read  to  our  children 
at  home,  and  closer  than  we  should  demand  for 
an  adult  novel.  The  threads  of  the  action  should 
be  so  closely  related  and  interlinked  that  they  are 
practically  all  in  action  all  the  time.  This  is 
particularly  true  for  the  younger  children.  It 
may  not  be  too  great  a  tax  upon  the  patience  and 
attention  of  the  older  children  to  leave  the  hero 


The  Choice  of  Stories  85 

in  imminent  danger  on  his  desert  island,  while 
we  return  for  several  chapters  to  the  heroine  in 
the  crypts  of  the  wicked  duke's  castle;  but  the 
little  ones  should  not  be  asked  to  endure  it. 

The  action  should  be  all  rounded  up  within 
the  one  design  and  atoo  at  the  artistic  stoppinfc- 
pla-ce^  To  appreciate  this  aspect  of  unity,  read 
Grimm's  Briar-Rose — that  wonderful  little  mas- 
terpiece of  structure — in  comparison  with  Per- 
rault's  The  Sleeping  Beauty  in  the  Wood,  which 
trails  after  it  the  ugly  and  inorganic  episode  of 
the  ogre  mother-in-law.  Even  in  the  cycles  of 
stories  the  separate  episodes  should  display  these 
qualities  of  unity. 

6.  When  we  choose  our  standard  class-story, 
we  will  have  in  mind  other  aspects  of,, the  prin- 

•*•  ^^^^••••^••^^^^^ 

oiple  of  economy,  or  of  due  artistic  measure.  .  In 
such  a  story  there  should  jjo_t  be  an  undue  appeal 
to  any  one  emotion.  Too  much  horror  or  dis- 
gust will  undo  the  very  effect  one  desires  to  pro- 
duce. Such  a  story  as  The  Dog  of  Flanders,  for 
example,  affords  a  sort  of  emotional  spree  of  pity 
and  pathos  through  which  the  steadier  members 
of  a  class  refuse  to  go,  and  which  the  more  emo- 
tional members  do  not  need.  Especially  should 
there  not  be  any  unnecessary  profusion  of 
magic,  of  supernatural  agencies,  of  daring  and 
danger.  This  brings  us  to  the  difficult  point  of 


86      Literature  in  the  Elementary  School 

the  degree  or  kind  of  unlikelihood  one  may  risk 
in  such  a  story.  When  one  is  reading  to  the 
single  child,  or  to  a  few  children,  or  if  one  is  a 
real  dramatic  genius,  this  unlikelihood  is  not  so 
important  a  matter,  because  it  is  not  difficult  under 
either  of  those  conditions  to  create  an  atmosphere 
of  artistic  faith  in  which  any  story  "goes."  But 
in  a  big  class,  with  the  ordinary  teacher  it  is  diffi- 
cult; some  inquisitive  or  skeptical  minds  will  call 
for  proof  or  detailed  statement,  and  quite  destroy 
the  rapport  demanded  for  the  perfect  apprecia- 
tion of  the  story.  In  a  class  I  once  knew  such  a 
skeptic,  who  was  indeed  a  mere  scientific  realist, 
brought  the  otherwise  enraptured  class  violently 
to  earth  during  the  reading  of  the  passage  of 
Odysseus  between  the  whirlpool  and  the  cliff,  by 
the  sardonic  suggestion  that  Scylla  must  have 
had  a  "rubber-neck."  When  it  can  be  avoided, 
do  not  tempt  your  skeptic  or  your  cynic  by  the 
kind  or  degree  of  unlikelihood  liable  to  excite  his 
protest. 

7.  The  story  should  be  serious.  This  does  not 
preclude  humorous  and  comic  stuff.  But  the 
funny  things  should  be  sincerely  funny,  as  con- 
tra-distinguished from  those  things  that  are 
ostentatiously  childlike,  elaborately  accomodated 
to  the  infant  mind,  ironical,  or  sentimental,  and 
the  teacher  must  so  know  his  story,  and  so  honor 


The  Choice  of  Stories  87 

it  and  his  children,  that  he  can  render  it  to  them 
whether  it  be  an  improbable  adventure  of  Odys- 
seus, or  the  merest  horse-play  of  a  folk-droll, 
sincerely  and  cordially. 

8.  In  the  earlier  typical  years  of  the  elemen- 
tary school,  through  the  sixth  grade  (twelve-year- 
old  children)  at  least,  the  persons  of  the  story 
should  be  those  who  do  things  rather  than  those 
who  become  something  else.  They  should  dis- 
play the  striking,  permanent  qualities  rather  than 
the  elusive,  evolving  qualities;  they  should  act 
from  simple  and  strong  motives,  not  from  obscure 
and  complex  ones.  Only  in  the  latest  years,  if  at 
all  within  the  period,  should  the  class  be  asked  to 
consider  more  intricate  types,  more  subjective 
qualities,  and  more  mixed  motives.  No  mistake  is 
likely  to  be  made  in  this  matter,  if  the  stories 
and  plays  are  well  chosen  from  the  point  of  view 
of  fitness  in  other  respects.  Every  teacher  who  is 
conscientious  and  informed,  will  realize  that  these 
persons  in  the  stories  contribute  their  quota — 
and  a  very  large  one — to  that  "copy,"  that  ideal 
self,  that  broods  over  every  child's  inner  life, 
inviting  him  on,  giving  him  courage  and  hope, 
reproof  and  praise,  leading  him  to  whatever  he 
attains  of  social  and  personal  morality.  And  every 
such  teacher  can  help  the  children  to  build  into 


88      Literature  in  the  Elementary  School 

their  ideals  the  permanent  and  valuable  qualities 
of  these  persons  of  their  story. 

9.  The  story  should  be  ethically  sound^  On 
this  point  one  would  like  to  make  discriminating 
statements.  One  does  not  teach  literature  in 
order  to  teach  morals  and  he  cannot  ask  that 
his  fairy-tale  should  turn  out  a  sermon,  or  that 
his  hero-tale  deliberately  inculcate  this  or  that 
virtue.  Indeed,  literature  may  be  completely  un- 
moral, and  still  safely  serve  the  purposes  of 
amusement  and  of  distinctively  literary  training 
— as  witness  the  nursery  rhymes,  the  Garden  of 
Verses,  Alice  in  Wonderland.  But  if  it  be  im- 
moral, it  is  also  artistically  unsound,  and  does  not 
yield  satisfactory  literary  results.  No  teacher  is 
in  danger  of  teaching  a  story  which  depicts 
the  attractions  of  vice  or  glorifies  some  roguish 
hero.  But  let  him  beware  also  of  those  less 
obvious  immoralities,  where  the  success  of  a 
story  turns  upon  some  piece  of  unjustifiable 
trickery  or  disobedience,  or  irreverence,  or 
some  more  serious  immorality,  which  thus  ha? 
placed  upon  it  the  weight  of  approval.  In  the 
chapbook  tale  of  Jack  and  the  Bean-Stalk, 
to  take  a  chance  example,  the  hero's  successful 
adventures  hinge  upon  a  piece  of  folly  and  dis- 
obedience; the  kindergartenized  version  of  The 
Three  Bears  excuses  an  unpardonable  breach  of 


The  Choice  of  Stories  89 

manners.  The  pivotal  issue,  the  central  spring  of 
a  story  must  be  ethically  strong,  so  as  to  bear  the 
closest  inspection  and  to  justify  itself  in  the  fierce 
light  of  class  discussion. 

Of  course,  one  should  be  cautious  here,  so  as 
not  to  seem  merely  puritanical  or  Pecksniffian. 
Subtlety  is  the  savage  virtue;  along  with  horse- 
play it  is  the  child's  substitute  for  both  wit  and 
humor.  The  wiles  and  devices  of  Odysseus  only 
endear  him  the  more  to  his  sympathetic  child-fol- 
lowers, as  they  did  to  Pallas  Athene  herself.  We 
cannot  give  to  the  classes  the  things  best  for  them 
in  other  ways,  and  exclude  all  tales  in  which 
wiliness  or  subtlety  constitutes  the  method,  if  not 
the  motive.  But  we  can  do  this:  we  can  see  to 
it  that  the  trick  tends  to  the  securing  of  final 
justice,  and  we  can  discriminate  between  mere 
deceitful  trickiness  and  that  subtlety  which  is,  as 
in  the  case  of  Odysseus,  quickness  of  wit  or 
steady  intellectual  dominance.  And  we  must 
make  many  allowances,  setting  ourselves  free  in 
the  child's  moral  world  as  it  really  is  to  him,  by 
constant  imaginative  sympathy.  According  to 
the  nursery  code  there  is  no  harm  in  playing  a 
trick  upon  a  giant;  by  very  virtue  of  being  a 
giant,  with  the  advantage  of  size  on  his  side,  and 
more  than  likely  stupid  besides,  he  is  fair  game 
for  any  nimble-witted  hero.  The  children  and 


go      Literature  in  the  Elementary  School 

their  heroes  use  the  deliciously  frank  and  entirely 
satisfying  argument  of  the  fisherman  who  freed 
the  monstrous  Afreet  from  the  bottle:  "This  is 
an  Afreet,  and  I  am  a  man,  and  Allah  has  given 
me  sound  reason.  Therefore  I  will  now  plot  his 
destruction."  The  butcher  and  the  hen-wife,  he- 
reditary villains  of  the  folk-tales,  are  such  unpitied 
victims.  The  misfortunes  of  Kluge  Else,  of  Hans 
in  Luck,  and  of  the  countless  other  noodles,  are 
but  the  proper  fruit  of  their  folly.  Every  child  will 
instinctively — and  indeed  ultimately — justify  the 
legal  quibble  by  which  Portia  defeats  Shylock,  as 
but  the  just  visitation  upon  his  cunningly  devised 
cruelty.  Let  it  be  a  clear  case  of  the  biter  bitten, 
and  of  the  injustice  or  stupidity  of  the  original 
biter,  and  one  need  not  fear  the  result — certainly 
not  the  artistic  result — upon  the  sensible  child  or 
upon  the  average  class — the  average  class  being, 
in  the  end,  always  a  sensible  child. 

At  the  same  time  one  hastens  to  say  that  to 
use  a  large  number  of  such  stories  would  place 
the  children  in  an  atmosphere  of  trickery  and 
petty  scheming  which  would  be  most  undesirable. 
I  have  read  with  a  group  of  children  where  the 
presence  of  one  incurably  slippery  member  so 
poisoned  the  air  that  it  would  have  been  unwise  to 
study  even  one  story  in  which  success  was 
achieved  by  the  use  of  a  trick  or  a  bit  of  subtlety. 


The  Choice  of  Stories  91 

Let  your  stories  be  ethically  sound,  even  the 
stratagems  and  wiles  making  for  justice,  and  the 
right  sort  of  mercy. 

10.  It  is  best,  on  the  whole,  that  the  stories 
given  in  class  have  a  satisfying  and  conclusive 
ending  of  the  romantic  sort.  It  should,  of  course, 
be  the  ending  for  which  the  events  have  paved 
the  way,  and  the  ending  which  the  children,  in 
view  of  the  direction  in  which  their  sympathies 
have  been  enlisted,  will  feel  to  be  just.  When  a 
tragic  ending  is  inevitable,  it  should,  in  the  case 
of  the  younger  children,  be  provided  for  and 
justified.  All  things  considered,  it  is  better,  emo- 
tionally and  artistically,  for  these  younger  chil- 
dren to  consider  in  class  those  stories  which  have 
a  fortunate  ending,  displaying  the  working  of 
poetic  justice,  leaving  for  the  older  groups  the 
tragedies,  and  the  logical  justice  of  a  convinced 
realism. 


CHAPTER  VI 

FOLK-TALE  AND  FAIRY-STORY 

Whatever  may  be  our  attitude  toward  the  cul- 
ture-epoch theory  of  a  child's  training  and 
experience,  or  however  much  we  may  vary  in  our 
conscious  or  unconscious  application  of  it,  no 
observer  of  children  will  have  failed  to  notice 
that  in  the  three  or  four  years  lying  about  the 
seventh,  they  have  their  characteristic  hour  of 
social  and  psychic  ripeness  for  fairy-tales.  Upon 
this  point  the  philosophical  deductions  of  the 
technical  pedagogues  coincide  perfectly  with  the 
intuitive  wisdom  of  all  the  generations  of  mothers 
and  nurses.  The  imaginative  activity  of  the  six- 
or  seven-year-old  person  coming  to  school  out  of 
the  environment  of  the  average  modern  home  is 
practically  on  the  same  level,  and  follows  the 
same  processes,  as  that  of  the  folk  who  produced 
the  golden  core  of  folk-tales — not  primitive 
savage  fragments  of  legend,  not  developed  artis- 
tic romance,  but  complete  little  tales,  simple  and 
sincere,  molded  into  acceptable  form  by  genera- 
tions of  use.  The  vision  of  the  world  physical 
and  social  that  these  tales  present,  and  their 
interpretation  of  its  activities,  is  that  which  is 
99 


Folk-Tale  and  Fairy-Story  93 

normal  to  the  seven-year-old  child,  and  consti- 
tutes therefore  the  natural  basis  on  which  his 
literary  education  begins,  and  affords  his  first 
effective  contact  with  imaginative  art. 

But  when  we  have  agreed  that  the  fairy-tales 
constitute  precisely  the  right  artistic  material  for 
these  children;  when  we  have  fixed  with  satis- 
factory definiteness  the  hour  of  their  ripeness  for 
them;  when  we  have  indicated  those  elements  in 
the  tales  that  render  them  serviceable,  we  are  still 
at  the  beginning  of  our  task.  For  we  find  our- 
selves in  the  presence  of  a  vast  mass  of  material 
from  which  we  must  choose  those  things  that  are 
so  typical  as  to  accomplish  for  our  children  the 
characteristic  service  of  folk-tales,  and  so  beauti- 
ful as  to  perform  the  added  service  of  good  litera- 
ture. And  so  wide  is  the  range  of  subject-matter 
and  form  in  the  stories  constituting  the  mass  that 
it  becomes  evident  at  a  glance  that  the  educational 
and  artistic  efficacy  of  the  fairy-tales  depends 
upon  the  wisdom  used  in  choosing  the  actual 
specimens.  The  most  useful  thing  to  be  done, 
then,  is  to  determine  a  set  of  trustworthy  and 
practical  principles  of  selection. 

We  should  understand,  to  begin  with,  what  we 
mean  by  fairy-tales.  It  is  now  impossible  to 
limit  this  term  to  those  stories  that  deal  with  the 
activities  of  an  order  of  invented  preter-human 


94      Literature  in  the  Elementary  School 

beings  called  fairies;  or  even  to  those  that 
contain  preternatural  or  supernatural  elements. 
With  the  old  fairy-tales  in  this  narrow  sense, 
have  been  incorporated  folk-tales  dealing  with 
matter  which  involves  only  natural  and  human 
material — beast-tales  and  bits  of  comic  adventure, 
for  example.  It  is  possible  to  treat  them,  how- 
ever, in  one  category,  because  of  the  fact  that  in 
all  those  that  are  worth  using  for  the  children  in 
class,  whether  there  be  fairies  involved  or  not, 
the  imaginative  process  is  of  the  same  kind,  the 
vision  of  the  world,  its  activities  and  its  possi- 
bilities, is  on  the  same  level  of  imaginative  com- 
bination and  artistic  interpretation ;  and  this  is  the 
level  of  the  children  for  whom  we  are  choosing. 

The  traditionary  stories,  the  real  folk-tales, 
have  been  divided  into  four  classes. 

I.  Sagas — stories  told  of  heroes,  of  historical 
events,  of  physical  phenomena,  of  the  names  or 
location  of  places,  and  intended  to  be  believed. 
They  are  to  be  differentiated  from  myth  by  the 
fact  that  they  have  never  assumed  any  religious 
or  symbolic  signification.  They  are,  as  a  matter 
of  fact,  hero-tales  in  the  making — of  the  same 
stuff  in  many  cases  as  the  great  hero-tales,  but 
having  remained  in  the  hands  of  the  folk,  have 
never  received  the  enrichment  and  beauty  of  those 
hero-tales  which  the  poets  took  up.  Such  folk- 


Folk-Tale  and  Fairy-Story    «*        95 

sagas  are  Whittington  and  His  Cat  and  Lady 
Godiva.  Most  of  these  stories  have  preter- 
natural or  supernatural  elements,  and  even  such 
as  have  no  such  elements  have  still  the  atmos- 
phere of  wonder,  and  those  fanciful  or  fantastic 
interpretations  characteristic  of  the  folk-imagi- 
nation. 

2.  M'drchen,  or  what  we  call  "nursery  tales" — 
those  told  for  artistic  pleasure,  pure  imaginative 
play,  the  creative  exercise  of  the  art-instinct 
They  may  or  may  not  exhibit  the  supernatural 
or  preternatural  elements;  in  some  of  them  ani- 
mals are  among  the  actors.  These  constitute 
the  large  mass  of  popular  and  nursery  tales;  Cin- 
derella, Beauty  and  the  Beast,  Puss  in  Boots, 
Briar-Rose,  The  Musicians  of  Bremen  will  do 
for  examples. 

3.  Drolls — comic  or  domestic  tales  which 
may  or  may  not  make  use  of  the  impossible,  the 
marvelous,  or  the  preternatural.  Generally  they 
are  tales  of  funny  misadventures,  cunning  horse- 
play, tricks,  the  misfortunes  or  undeserved 
good  luck  of  "noodles."  Such,  chosen  from 
many  examples,  are  Kluge  Else,  Lazy  Jack,  Mr. 
Vinegar,  Hans  in  Luck. 

^4.  Cumulative  tales- — those  in  which  incident 
is  inter-linked  with  incident  by  some  more  or  less 
artificial  principle  of  association,  constituting  in 


g6      Literature  in  the  Elementary  School 

some  cases  a  mere  string  of  associated  happen- 
ings, in  others  a  fairly  rounded  out  story.  Such, 
in  its  simplest  form,  are  The  House  That  Jack 
Built,  Titty-mouse  and  Tatty-mouse,  Henny-pennyf 
and  the  old  swapping  ballads. 

The  modern  stories  corresponding  to  these  are 
of  three  kinds :  those  written  in  imitation  of  the 
folk-sagas  and  Mdrchen;  those  which  introduce 
preter-human  elements  as  symbols;  those  which 
personify  the  phenomena  and  forces  of  nature. 

It  is  not  mere  convention  that  leads  one  to 
choose  for  the  children  in  class  the  traditionary 
or  folk-tales  in  preference  to  the  modern  fairy- 
story.  Many  new  so-called  fairy-tales  are  doubt- 
less harmless  and  amusing  enough,  and  may  serve 
a  purpose  in  hours  of  mere  recreation.  But  they 
lack  those  abiding  qualities  one  seeks  in  a  story  he 
gives  as  discipline  and  to  a  class.  Failing  to 
possess  the  very  fundamental  characteristics  of 
the  folk-tale,  they  fail  to  perform  the  typical  and 
desirable  service  of  the  folk-tale.  First  of  all, 
modern  fairy-tales  are  neither  convinced  nor  con- 
vincing; they  are  imitations,  which  cannot  fail  to 
miss  the  soul  of  the  original.  There  can  be  no  new 
fairy-tales  written,  because  there  is  no  longer  a 
possibility  of  belief  in  fairies,  and  no  longer 
among  adults  a  possibility  of  looking  at  the  world 
as  the  folk  and  the  child  look  at  it.  The  substitu- 


Folk-Tale  and  Fairy -Story  97 

tion  of  the  pert  fairies  and  dapper  elves  of  litera- 
ture and  the  theater  for  the  serious  preterhuman 
agents  of  the  folk-tale  creates  at  once  in  the  new 
stories  an  atmosphere  of  dilettantism,  of  insin- 
cerity. Titania  and  Oberon,  flower-fairies,  dew- 
fairies,  gauzy  wings  and  spangled  skirts,  were  not 
in  the  mind  of  the  people  who  told  these  tales  of 
the  sometimes  grim  and  schauderhaft  and  always 
serious  beings — fairies,  elves,  goblins,  or  what 
not.  Wicked  little  brown  men  disappearing  into  a 
green  hillock  with  the  human  child,  in  exchange 
for  whom  they  have  left  in  the  cottage  cradle  a 
brown  imp  of  their  own;  the  godmother  with 
the  fairy-gift  who  brings  justice  and  joy  to  the 
wronged  maiden;  the  slighted  wise  woman  fore- 
telling death  and  doom  over  the  cradle  of  the 
little  princess;  the  kind  and  gentle  Beast  whom 
love  disenchants  and  restores  to  his  own  noble 
form — all  these  were  to  those  who  made  them 
serious  art,  as  they  should  be  to  the  child.  If  one 
could  make  the  old  distinction  without  dreading 
to  be  misunderstood  in  these  days  of  opposition  to 
"faculty"  criticism,  he  would  say  that  the 
folk-tales  exhibit  the  working  of  the  deep  human 
imagination,  using  all  the  powers  of  the  mind, 
and  reorganizing  the  world ;  the  modern  fairy- 
tale exhibits  the  exercise  of  the  fancy,  disporting 
itself  in  a  very  small  corner  of  the  world  of  art 


98      Literature  in  the  Elementary  School 

It  is,  first  of  all,  as  one  cannot  say  too  often, 
the  imaginative  level  of  the  folk-tales  that  fits 
them  for  the  child's  use.  They  are  the  creative 
reconstruction  of  the  world  by  those  who  were 
rich  in  images  and  sense-material,  unhampered  in 
the  use  of  it  by  any  system  of  logic  or  body  of 
organized  knowledge,  simple,  sincere  and  full 
of  faith — as  our  own  well-born  children  are  at 
six-seven-eight  It  is  this  simplicity,  sincerity, 
and  earnestness  that  gives  them  their  childlike- 
ness — all  qualities  that  one  fails  to  find  in  the 
modern  fairy-tale  written  by  a  grown  person 
for  children.  Nothing  is  so  alien  to  the 
consciousness  of  the  child  as  the  consciousness 
of  the  grown-up  educated  man.  It  is  by  noth- 
ing short  of  a  miracle  that  he  can  keep  his  own 
sophistications  out  of  what  he  writes  for  chil- 
dren. His  fairy-tale,  failing  in  simplicity,  will 
betake  itself  to  babbling  inanity;  failing  in  earnest- 
ness, it  gives  itself  over  to  sentimentality;  failing 
in  belief,  it  is  likely  to  be  filled  with  cynicism 
and  cheap  satire  under  the  guise  of  playfulness. 
These  faults  may  be  found,  all  too  plentiful,  even 
in  the  best  work  of  Hans  Christian  Andersen, 
while  they  poison  practically  everything  done  for 
children  by  Kingsley  and  Hawthorne.  The  im- 
mense advantage  of  the  traditionary  tales  is  that 
they  were  not  made  for  children.  The  Mdrchen 


Folk-Tale  and  Fairy-Story  99 

of  our  day  was  the  novel  or  romance  of  the 
people  among  whom  it  had  its  earlier  history.  It 
therefore  escapes  entirely  the  "little  dears"  appeal 
and  method.  The  obviously  amateur  heat- 
fairies,  snow-fairies,  flower-fairies,  and  all  the 
others  which  figure  in  the  merely  fanciful  and 
always  misleading  myth-making  of  the  belated 
kindergarten  and  the  holiday  book  of  commerce, 
serve  chiefly  to  bewilder  the  child's  judgment, 
to  confuse  his  imagination,  and  to  cheapen  the 
supernatural  in  his  art,  which  should  be  sparing 
and  serious,  as  it  should  be  in  all  art.  Besides, 
the  natural  phenomena  with  which  these  fancies 
are  connected  are  much  more  beautiful,  more 
appealing  to  the  imagination,  and  ultimately  more 
serviceable  to  art,  if  they  are  rightly  presented  as 
plain  nature. 

There  are  certain  modern  symbolistic  stories 
containing  elements  of  the  fantastic  and  super- 
natural kind  that  are  good  and  beautiful  enough 
to  make  a  genuinely  desirable  contribution  to  the 
child's  experience.  It  is  advisable  to  reserve  these, 
however,  until  the  children  are  old  enough  and 
experienced  enough  to  understand  them  as  sym- 
bols. Such  stories  are  Stockton's  The  Bee-Man 
of  Orn,  slightly  edited;  The  Water  Babies, 
always  expurgated  of  Kingsley's  ponderous  fool- 
ing; The  Snow  Image,  The  Ugly  Duckling. 


ioo     Literature  in  the  Elementary  School 

It  is  not  only  that  the  world  of  imaginary 
beings  and  marvelous  forces  in  the  folk-tale  en- 
chant the  child  and  further  his  artistic  develop- 
ment in  the  most  natural  way;  the  human  world 
of  these  tales  is  a  delightful  and  wholesome  one 
for  him  to  know.  It  is  a  naive  and  simple  world, 
where  he  may  come  close  to  the  actual  processes 
of  life  and  see  them  as  picturesque  and  interest- 
ing. Where  else  in  our  modern  world  can  a 
child  encounter  the  shoemaker,  the  tailor,  the 
miller,  the  hen-wife,  the  weaver,  the  spinner,  in 
their  primitive  dignity  and  importance?  There 
are  kings,  to  be  sure,  and  princes,  but  except  in 
certain  of  the  stories  that  took  permanent  literary 
shape  in  the  seventeenth  century,  they  are,  like 
the  kings  and  princes  in  the  Odyssey,  plain  and 
democratic  monarchs,  on  terms  of  beautiful 
equality  with  the  noble  swineherd  and  the  charm- 
ing tailor.  King  Arthur  in  the  nursery  ballad 
stole  a  peck  of  barley  meal  to  make  a  bag-pud- 
ding, in  the  homeliest  and  most  democratic  way, 
and  the  picture  of  the  queen  frying  the  cold  pud- 
ding for  breakfast  seems  only  natural  to  the  little 
democrats  of  six  and  seven  in  our  own  day.  This 
world  of  genuine  people  and  honest  occupations 
is  charming  and  educative  in  itself,  and  consti- 
tutes the  most  effective  and  convincing  back- 


Folk-Tale  and  Fairy-Story  101 

ground  for  the  supernatural  and  the  marvelous 
when  that  element  is  present. 

When  we  have  said  that  it  is  the  folk  or 
traditionary  tales  that  we  should  choose,  we  do 
not  mean  that  we  should  consider  the  whole 
realm  of  folk-lore  material,  primitive  and  savage 
tales — African,  Indian,  Igorrote;  though,  as  a 
matter  of  fact,  every  teacher  of  children  should  be 
something  of  a  scientific  student  of  folk-stories. 
It  increases  his  respect  and  sympathy  for  the 
specimens  he  actually  chooses  to  know  where  they 
stand  in  the  large  whole — their  history  and  human 
value.  Besides,  the  experienced  teacher  will  often 
find  in  the  outlying  regions  of  folk-tales  the  germ 
of  a  story  precisely  suited  to  his  needs,  and  he 
can  have  the  very  real  pleasure  of  endowing  it 
with  an  acceptable  form  and  putting  it  into  edu- 
cational circulation. 

But  on  the  whole,  the  teacher  must  be  very 
expert,  and  must  have  extraordinary  needs,  to 
feel  justified  in  going  outside  the  established 
canon  of  fairy-tales  for  his  material.  For  there 
is  a  canon  more  or  less  fixed,  into  which  have 
entered  those  stories  that  have  from  long  and 
perpetual  use  taken  on  a  more  or  less  acceptable 
form;  stories  from  those  nations  whose  culture 
has  blended  to  produce  the  modern  occidental 
tradition.  The  canon  includes  Grimm's  tales, 


iO2    Literature  in  the  Elementary  School 

Perrault's  Mother  Goose  tales,  a  few  of  Madame 
d'Aulnoy's,  a  few  Danish  and  Norwegian  stories, 
some  from  Italian  sources  and  through  Italian 
media,  some  from  the  Arabian  Nights,  some 
unhesitatingly  admitted  lately  from  collections 
of  English  folk-tales  made  in  our  own  day, 
two  or  three  chapbook  stories,  a  few  inter- 
lopers like  The  Three  Bears,  Goody  Two 
Shoes,  and  some  of  Andersen's — not  popu- 
lar tales  at  all,  but  having  in  them  some  myste- 
rious charm  that  opened  the  door  to  them.  One 
cannot  attempt  to  fix  the  limits  more  narrowly, 
for  he  has  no  sooner  closed  the  list  than  he  real- 
izes that  every  teacher  who  has  used  them,  every 
mother  who  has  read  them  to  her  little  people, 
every  boy  or  girl  who  loves  them,  will  have  some 
other  tale  to  insert,  some  perfect  thing  not  pro- 
vided for  in  this  tentative  catalogue.  Besides, 
from  time  to  time  there  does  appear  a  new  claim- 
ant with  every  title  to  admission,  such  as  some  of 
the  Irish  tales  told  by  Seumas  McManus  or 
Douglas  Hyde,  or  certain  of  the  Zuni  folk- 
tales collected  by  Gushing.  But  on  the  whole, 
may  we  not  agree  that  the  list  indicated  consti- 
tutes the  authentic  accepted  canon  of  fairy-tales 
established  and  approved  by  the  teachers  and 
children  of  occidental  tradition  and  rearing  ? 
Still,  there  are  choices  to  be  made  among  these 


Folk-Tale  and  Fairy -Story  103 

folk-tales  of  the  accepted  list.  No  child  should  be 
told  all  of  them.  Practically  all  children  do  have 
too  many  fairy-tales  told  them,  and  suffer  in 
this,  as  in  most  of  the  things  supplied  them,  from 
the  discouraging  and  confusing  "too  much."  For 
a  whole  year  in  which  the  main  stories  are  taken 
from  the  folk-tales,  a  half-dozen  stories  will  be 
enough. 

It  is  not  among  the  folk-sagas  that  one  will 
find  the  best  stories  of  this  kind  for  his  children. 
These,  indeed,  are  scarcely  to  be  called  literature. 
Most  of  them  are  tales  explaining  by  a  legend 
some  natural  feature,  the  name  of  a  place  or  a 
person,  or  attaching  to  some  historic  person  a 
stock  adventure,  wonderful  or  preternatural. 
Some  of  them  are,  as  has  been  said,  germs  of 
hero-tales  that  never  obtained  popular  artistic 
favor,  or  they  are  far-away  echoes  of  hero-tales, 
or  they  are  stories  of  the  pourquoi  kind — semi- 
mythical  in  import,  and  consequently  lacking  the 
universal  appeal  and  fitness  of  literature.  Any 
teacher  may  find  one  of  the  stories  of  this  group 
adapted  to  his  purpose,  but  he  will  not  find  most 
of  his  folk-material  here.  In  the  cycles  of  hero 
tales,  King  Arthur  and  Siegfried  for  example, 
we  can  find  many  of  these  minor  sagas  imbedded 
in  the  larger  cycle,  but  still  detachable  and  often 
easily  adaptable  for  the  younger  children. 


104     Literature  in  the  Elementary  School 

It  is  among  the  Mdrchen  that  we  find  our 
supply  of  stories.  This  is  not  the  place  to  dis- 
cuss the  science  of  nursery-tales,  their  origin, 
genesis,  dissemination,  or  any  of  the  other 
scholar's  aspects,  inviting  though  all  these  topics 
be.  One  is  quite  aware  that  even  in  the  most 
social  Mdrchen  there  may  be  found  detritus  of 
myth;  one  should  be  equally  aware  that  in  cer- 
tain other  Mdrchen  he  finds  the  original  germ 
which  finally  evolved  into  a  myth-story.  But 
let  not  the  teacher  and  lover  of  folk-tales  as  art 
allow  himself  to  become  ensnared  in  myth  inter- 
pretations of  his  tales;  that  way  literary  and 
pedagogic  madness  lies.  Countless  generations 
ago  those  which  perchance  had  a  mythical  signifi- 
cance lost  it  and  became  art,  completely  human- 
ized in  life  and  experience. 

The  drolls,  when  one  chooses  well  among 
them,  are  precisely  adapted  to  add  the  element  of 
fun  that  should  never  be  long  absent  from  the  chil- 
dren's literature.  There  are,  of  course,  number- 
less comic  folk-tales  too  coarse  and  too  brutal  to 
be  used  in  our  day,  except  by  the  scientific  stu- 
dent of  culture.  The  fun  of  the  drolls  is,  as  a 
matterof  fact,  not  on  a  high  level — practical  jokes, 
perfectly  obvious  contretemps,  the  adventures  and 
achievements  of  noodles,  are  their  typical  ma- 
terial. But  this  is  the  comic  level  of  the  average 


Folk-Tale  and  Fairy-Story  105 

child  for  whom  we  choose  them.  It  is  the  first 
step  above  physical  fun,  and  from  this  step  we 
can  undertake  to  start  him  on  his  delightful  jour- 
ney up  the  ever-refining  path  of  literary  comedy. 
From  tricks  and  horse-play  he  may  pass  rapidly 
to  humor  and  nonsense.  But  at  six-seven,  hav- 
ing had  the  Little  Guinea  Pig  and  Simple  Simonzs 
an  undergraduate  kinder,  he  is  ready  for  Hans 
in  Luck  and  Mr.  Miacca.  Like  the  Olympians 
themselves,  he  will  roar  at  Hephaestus'  limp,  and 
with  the  council  of  Homeric  heroes  he  will  laugh 
at  the  physical  chastisement  of  Thersites,  and 
enjoy  the  none-too-penetrating  trick  that  Odys- 
seus played  upon  the  blundering  Polyphemus. 
There  is  no  danger  that  the  children  will  not  out- 
grow this  stage  of  comic  appreciation — the 
danger  is  that  they  will  outgrow  it  instead  of  add- 
ing to  it  all  the  other  stages.  There  is  something 
wrong  with  the  artistic  culture  of  the  man  who 
cannot  at  forty  smile  at  the  follies  of  the  Peterkin 
family,  at  the  same  time  that  he  completely  savors 
the  comedy  of  The  Egoist. 

The  accumulative  tales  have  their  service  to 
render.  Perhaps  their  characteristic  moment 
comes  a  little  earlier  than  even  the  first  year  of 
school.  Before  he  is  six  the  little  citizen  of  the 
world  will  have  been  building  up  his  vision  of 
the  interdependence  and  interaction  of  men  and 


io6     Literature  in  the  Elementary  School 

things.  To  this  vision  the  accumulative  tales 
bring  the  contribution  of  art.  Many  of  them, 
being  the  simplest  adjustment  of  incident  to  inci- 
dent, such  as  The  Old  Woman  Who  Found  the 
Sixpence  and  The  Little  Red  Hen,  are  ideal  for 
the  nursery  and  kindergarten  child.  Others 
still,  built  upon  the  accumulative  principle,  but 
more  complex  or  more  artistic  in  form,  will 
charm  and  instruct  the  first-year  scholars — 
Henny-Penny,  for  example,  and  Hans  in  Luck, 
and  The  Three  Billy-goats  Gruff.  From  the  point 
of  view  of  composition,  they  may  well  be  studied 
by  the  older  children,  because  they  permit  the 
examination  of  the  separate  incidents,  and  exhibit 
in  most  cases  the  very  simplest  principles  of 
structure. 

But  coming  still  closer  to  the  choosing  of  the 
actual  specimens  for  the  classes,  it  would  be  only 
fatuous  to  ignore  the  fact  that  when  we  come 
to  the  matter  of  the  final  choice,  we  are  upon 
difficult  ground,  educationally  and  critically. 
But  we  can  save  ourselves  from  presumption 
and  dogmatism  by  discussing  a  few  practical,  but 
general,  grounds  of  choice,  reminding  ourselves 
that  in  the  specific  school  and  with  the  specific 
class  many  modifying  minor  principles  will  arise. 

The  teacher  will  be  much  comforted  and 
steadied  if  he  remember  that  he  is  teaching  lit  era- 


Folk-Tale  and  Fairy-Story  107 

ture,  and  is  therefore  freed  from  any  obligation 
to  the  stories  as  myth,  or  as  scientific  folk-lore,  as 
sociology  or  as  nature-study;  let  nothing  tempt 
him  to  the  study  of  the  first  member  of  the  com- 
pany of  musicians  of  Bremen,  as  "a  type  of  the 
solid-hoofed  animals,"  of  Red  Riding-Hood  as  a 
"dawn-myth,"  or  of  The  Three  Bears  as  "parent- 
hood in  the  wild." 

The  teacher  will  select  those  tales  that  have 
somewhere  in  their  history  acquired  an  artistic 
organization,  rejecting  in  favor  of  them  those 
which  remain  chaotic  and  disorganized.  Com- 
pare, for  example,  in  this  matter,  the  perfect  little 
plot  of  Madame  de  Beaumont's  Beauty  and  the 
Beast  with  Grimm's  The  Golden  Bird — a  string 
of  loosely  connected,  partly  irrelevant  incidents. 
He  will  prefer  those  that  display  economy  of 
incident — in  which  each  incident  helps  along  the 
action,  or  contributes  something  essential  to  the 
situation.  Of  course,  it  is  rather  characteristic 
of  the  folk  mind,  as  of  the  child  mind,  to  heap 
up  incidents  a  propos  de  bottes;  but  as  this  is  one 
of  the  characteristics  to  be  corrected  in  the  child 
by  his  training  in  literature,  so  it  is  one  of  the 
faults  which  should  exclude  a  fairy-tale  from  his 
curriculum.  To  make  the  difference  among  the 
stories  in  this  regard  quite  clear,  compare  the 
neat,  orderly,  and  essential  flow  of  incident  in 


io8     Literature  in  the  Elementary  School 

The  Musicians  of  Bremen  with  the  baffling  mul- 
tiplicity and  confusion  displayed  by  Madame 
d'Aulnoy's  The  Wonderful  Sheep.  Other  things 
being  equal,  he  will  prefer  for  discipline  those 
fairy-stories  which  use  the  fairy  and  other  pre- 
ternatural elements  in  artistic  moderation,  to 
those  that  fill  every  incident  with  marvels  and  in- 
troduce supernatural  machinery  apparently  out  of 
mere  exuberance.  This  element  is  much  more 
impressive  when  used  in  art  with  reticence  and 
economy.  Even  a  little  child  grows  too  familiar 
with  marvels  when  these  crowd  one  another  on 
every  page,  and  ceases  either  to  shiver  or  to  thrill. 
In  the  fairy-tale,  as  in  art  for  mature  people,  the 
supernatural  should  appear  only  at  the  ultimate 
moment,  or  for  the  ultimate  purpose,  and  then 
in  amount  and  potency  only  sufficient  to  accom- 
plish the  result.  Perrault  was  very  cautious  upon 
this  point;  in  all  his  tales  he  seems  to  have  re- 
duced the  element  of  the  marvelous  to  the  small- 
est amount  and  to  have  called  upon  it  only  at  the 
pivotal  points.  Compare  in  his  Cinderella  the 
sufficiency  of  his  single  proviso,  "Now,  this 
godmother  was  a  fairy,"  with  the  tedious 
superfluity  of  irrelevant  marvels  in  Grimm's 
version  of  the  same  tale.  Is  this  bring- 
ing the  fascinating  abundance  of  the  Teutonic 
folk  fancy  to  a  disadvantageous  comparison  with 


Folk-Tale  and  Fairy-Story  109 

the  neat  and  orderly,  but  more  common-place, 
Gallic  mind  ?  By  no  means.  One  has  many  occa- 
sions to  regret,  when  he  reads  Perrault's  version 
of  the  wonderful  tales  he  found,  that  he  was  a 
precisian  in  style  and  a  courtier  in  manners;  and 
we  may  find  in  the  most  apparently  artless  tales 
told  by  Grimm  or  by  Asbjornsen  the  most  per- 
fect organization  and  economy;  as,  for  example 
in  Briar-Rose  or  in  The  Three  Billy-goats  Gruff. 

Besides,  one  hastens  to  add  that  every  child 
should  hear  and  should  later  on  have  a  chance 
to  read  some  of  the  free,  wandering,  fantastic 
things  which  his  teacher  cannot  feel  justified  in 
giving  to  the  class. 

One  is  obliged  to  take  some  attitude  in  medi- 
ating the  folk-tales  to  the  modern  child,  toward 
the  fact  that  we  often  find  them  reflecting  a  moral 
standard  quite  different  from  that  which  the  aver- 
age well-bred  child  is  brought  up  by;  and  this 
situation  is  complicated  by  the  fact  that  the  chil- 
dren are  too  young  to  understand  dramatically 
another  moral  standard.  This  aspect  of  the 
stories  has  been  pretty  well  covered  by  the  gen- 
eral discussion  in  the  previous  chapter.  But, 
luckily,  it  is  quite  possible  to  reject  all  those  folk- 
tales of  questionable  morals  and  objectionable 
taste  and  still  have  plenty  to  choose  from.  Be 
slow  to  reject  a  folk-tale  unless  the  bit  of  immor- 


no    Literature  in  the  Elementary  School 

ality — a  lie,  an  act  of  disloyalty,  or  irreverence — 
or  the  bit  of  coarseness  really  forms  the  pivot  of 
the  story.  Only  then  is  the  story  unsafe  or 
incurable. 

One  must  take  an  attitude,  not  only  toward 
the  morals  of  the  folk-tale,  but  toward  its  man- 
ners as  well.  There  is  some  violence  in  many  of 
the  most  attractive  nursery  tales;  many  of  them 
reflect  a  rather  rough-and-tumble  state  of  social 
communion ;  many  exhibit  a  superfluity  of  blood- 
shed or  other  grisly  physical  horrors.  We  quickly 
grant  that  it  is  not  wise  to  read  enough  of  these, 
or  to  linger  long  enough  over  the  forbidding 
details,  to  create  a  deep  or  an  abiding  atmosphere 
of  terror.  But  it  is  certainly  true  that  the  modern 
child  of  six  or  seven  has  so  little  apperception 
material  for  physical  horrors  that  they  do  not 
take  any  deep  hold  upon  him.  Indeed,  the  safety 
of  modern  life,  and  the  absence  of  visible  vio- 
lence, have  taken  the  emotional  appeal  out  of 
many  grim  lessons  of  Spenser's  and  of  Dante's. 
Murder  in  the  Mdrchen  is  to  the  modern  child 
actually  a  bit  of  fine  art — merely  a  neat  and  con- 
vincing way  of  disposing  of  iniquitous  elder 
brothers  and  hostile  magicians.  The  fact  that 
the  child's  experience  and  information  enable  him 
to  make  no  image  of  the  physiological  sequelae 
of  the  cutting-off  of  heads,  for  instance,  makes 


Folk-Tale  and  Fairy-Story  in 

it  easy  for  the  teacher  to  carry  him  harmless 
past  details  that  would  seem  brutal  to  his  nerv- 
ous and  squeamish  elders.  And  these  details 
are  never  the  point  of  emphasis  in  any  good  story. 
And  on  the  whole,  those  persons  whom  the  chil- 
dren like  and  are  likely  to  incorporate  into  their 
"pattern,"  have  manners  either  just  or  gentle 
even  in  the  folk-tales. 

It  might  be  well  to  introduce  among  the  folk- 
tales an  occasional  short  story  of  contemporary 
life,  recording  the  activities  of  persons  such  as 
the  children  actually  know.  This  is  not  so  im- 
portant in  this  stage  of  their  experience  as  it  will 
be  later;  first  because  the  folk-tales  do  not  seem 
antiquated  nor,  if  they  are  wisely  selected,  unduly 
fantastic  to  them,  since  they  find  themselves 
imaginatively  so  much  at  home  with  material  and 
the  method;  and,  in  the  second  place,  because 
in  every  well-regulated  school  their  fact  studies 
and  occupation  work  are  at  this  time  concrete 
and  charming,  and  keep  them  rightly  and 
sufficiently  in  touch  with  the  world  of  actuality. 

Of  course  we  must  accompany  and  supple- 
ment the  folk-tales  by  verses,  since  even  at  this 
age  we  may  impress  upon  the  children  the  music 
of  speech,  and  some  of  the  minor  literary 
beauties.  They  will  probably  be  delighted  to 
repeat  (in  many  classes  many  of  the  children  will 


ii2     Literature  in  the  Elementary  School 

be  learning  them  for  the  first  time)  the  lovely 
hereditary  jingles  and  ballads  from  Mother 
Goose — "The  Crooked  Man,"  "I  Saw  a  Ship  a- 
Sailing,"  "Sing  a  Song  of  Sixpence,"  the  rhymes 
for  games  and  for  counting-out  There  are 
a  very  few  of  Stevenson's  simple  enough  for  this 
period ;  and  there  may  be  a  further  choice  among 
things  found  here  and  there,  simple,  objective, 
and  perfectly  musical.  It  is  not  so  much  the  con- 
tent and  meaning  of  poetry  that  we  can  hope  to 
impress  upon  little  people  under  eight,  as  the 
music  and  motion  of  the  verse.  There  will  be, 
however,  many  members  of  every  class  who  will 
be  interested  in  the  meaning,  the  images,  and 
the  persons,  if  there  be  persons.  We  will  take 
all  pains,  therefore,  to  see  that  these  be  not  un- 
suitable. 

These — folk-tales  and  simple  singing  lyrics — 
with  a  fable  or  two  told  as  anecdotes,  and  re- 
peated until  even  the  little  children  begin  to  see 
that  there  is  something  more  than  meets  the  eye 
— all  graded  and  modified  in  the  light  of  the 
personnel  and  experience  of  the  actual  class,  may 
constitute  the  literature  of  the  first  two  years  of 
school. 


CHAPTER 

MYTH  AS  UTERATURE 

The  presupposition  that  myth  is  par  excel- 
lence the  literary  material  for  young  children 
doubtless  grew  out  of  a  misinterpretation  of 
the  so-called  mythopoeic  age  in  the  children,  and 
some  fundamental  misconception  of  the  nature  of 
myth  and  its  relation  to  other  folk  and  tradition- 
ary material.  There  is  no  place  in  this  little  book 
even  to  suggest  the  problems  that  surround  the 
nature  and  genesis  of  myth.  But  it  does  seem 
desirable  to  make  in  a  simple  way  a  few  distinc- 
tions that  may  serve  to  set  us  on  the  right  road. 

First  of  all,  myth  is  religion,  and  not  art.  It 
is  not  a  thing  of  mere  imagination.  It  is  the 
explanation  or  interpretation  of  some  physical 
fact,  some  historical  occurrence,  some  social  cus- 
tom, some  racial  characteristic,  some  established 
ritual  or  worship.  It  is  the  religious  or  emotional 
response  to  some  influence  or  activity  in  the  world 
so  impressive  or  so  efficacious  as  to  seem  to  call 
for  explanation  in  terms  of  supernatural  agencies. 

This  explanatory  or  interpretative  stage  or 
aspect  of  myth  may  be  first  historically,  or  it  may 
not  be.  It  is  probably  first  in  most  myths  in  a 

"3 


ii4     Literature  in  the  Elementary  School 

simple  and  crude  form,  which  in  all  developed 
myths  has  been  enriched  and  modified  by 
influences  from  the  other  stages  and  aspects. 
The  second  stage — or  shall  we  call  it  merely 
another  aspect — is  the  assigning  of  distinct  per- 
sonality and  individuality  to  the  agencies  assumed 
to  account  for  events  and  appearances.  Then 
follows  rapidly  the  interrelations  and  inter- 
actions of  these  persons,  the  surrounding  of  them 
with  friends  and  subordinates,  the  building-up  of 
a  whole  intricate  society  of  divinities  after  the 
model  of  human  society — all  at  first  symbolistic 
and  of  religious  significance.  A  third  stage  or 
aspect  is  that  of  the  cult,  the  worship,  the  estab- 
lishment of  a  priesthood  delivering  authoritative 
messages,  mediating  influences  to  the  people,  and 
adding  constantly  to  the  body  of  explanations 
and  interpretations  surrounding  each  divinity. 
The  fourth  stage  or  aspect  is  that  in  which  it 
becomes,  or  becomes  identified  with,  a  body  of 
moral  doctrines  or  ethical  principles;  where  the 
personal  divinities,  with  their  qualities,  insig- 
nia, and  associations,  are  taken  as  symbols  of 
inner  human  forces,  of  moral  and  social  achieve- 
ment, as  expressions  of  spiritual  influences  oper- 
ant  in  human  nature  and  life. 

Let  it  be  understood  that   in  naming  these 
stages  or  aspects  there  has  been  no  attempt  to 


Myth  as  Literature  115 

place  them  either  in  chronological  or  in  logical 
order,  and  no  intention  of  saying  that  they  stand 
apart  from  one  another  in  an  easily  recognized 
distinctness.  But,  however  interlinked  and  mutu- 
ally modified  they  may  be,  we  must  in  any  dis- 
cussion of  myth,  be  aware  of  these  four  sides  or 
steps. 

Take,  for  example,  the  Greek  myth  of  Apollo. 
As  an  explanation  of  physical  phenomena  he  is 
light  or  fire,  sometimes  specialized  as  the  spirit  of 
the  sun.  But  he  is  embodied  and  endowed  with  a 
personality;  he  has  social  conditions  and  sub- 
sidiary functions  assigned  to  him.  As  a  person 
he  is  the  son  of  Zeus  and  Leto,  twin  brother  of 
Artemis,  leader  of  the  nine  Muses,  guardian  of 
pastured  flocks  and  herds,  as  Artemis  of  the  wild 
creatures  who  feed  or  frolic  by  night.  As  his 
worship  spread  and  deepened,  there  gathered 
about  him  many  other  functions — he  was  the  god 
of  healing,  of  music,  of  law,  of  atonement;  and 
many  tributary  and  subordinate  divinities  were 
associated  with  him  in  all  these  activities.  There 
gathered  into  his  myth  also  an  enormous  and 
complex  body  of  stories,  romantic  and  mystical, 
explanatory  and  prophetic — stories  of  adventure, 
of  contact  with  the  other  gods,  of  sojourns  with 
men,  of  pilgrimages  to  unknown  regions;  some 
of  them  merely  romantic,  some  of  them  symbol- 


n6     Literature  in  the  Elementary  School 

istic,  many  of  them  profoundly  significant  of  his 
powers  and  offices. 

And  the  myth  of  Apollo  is  remarkable  for  its 
ancient  and  elaborate  worship.  Already  when  the 
Homeric  poems  were  made,  the  shrine  of  Apollo 
at  Delphos  was  the  scene  of  an  old  and  compli- 
cated ritual.  There  was  even  then  a  temple  rich 
with  the  accumulated  treasure  of  the  votive  offer- 
ings of  generations  of  worshipers.  Priests  and 
prophets,  the  mystic  offices  of  the  Pythia,  poets 
and  musicians,  stately  processions  of  kings  and 
warriors  seeking  oracles,  combined  to  maintain 
the  dignity  and  sanctity  of  this  most  impressive 
worship. 

From  the  very  earliest  times  of  which  we 
have  record  of  this  myth,  Apollo  was  known 
to  be  a  spiritual  and  ethical  force  at  work  in 
man's  soul.  He  was  named  when  men  tried  to 
speak  of  those  experiences  which  wrought  expia- 
tion and  purification.  He  stood  for  milder  law, 
for  beneficent  and  benevolent  social  order,  for 
art,  for  the  songs  of  the  sacred  bard,  the  dirge  of 
grief,  the  paean  of  victory,  the  games — all  the 
gentler  things  of  social  culture  and  personal  ex- 
perience. 

In  these  and  in  many  other  ways  did  the  myth 
of  Apollo  express  the  human  soul  and  act  upon 
it  It  was  a  religion — as  every  developed  myth 


Myth  as  Literature  117 

is — to  be  handled  reverently.  We  might  have 
chosen  other  examples  quite  as  elaborate  and  as 
full  of  mystic  significance — the  myth  of  Diony- 
sus, or  the  more  widespread  and  deeply  devo- 
tional myth  of  Demeter. 

Art,  too,  concerned  as  it  is  with  everything 
that  promotes  or  reflects  man's  spirit,  has  uses 
for  the  elements  of  myth,  and  has  its  own  way  of 
handling  them.  On  two  of  the  four  steps  of 
myth  art,  especially  literature,  finds  acceptable 
material.  On  the  stage  named  second — the  stage 
in  which  the  influence  or  power  becomes  person- 
ified, takes  on  relations  to  other  personified  influ- 
ences, and  calls  into  being  other  divine  persons, 
his  children,  his  helpers  and  subordinates,  takes 
his  place  in  a  society  of  divinities,  and  exercises 
his  more  or  less  specialized  function  in  this 
society,  and  also  in  human  life  and  activity — 
have  the  poets  and  romancers  found  many  oppor- 
tunities. Adventures  and  romantic  experiences 
of  all  sorts  easily  attached  themselves  to  the  per- 
son of  some  divinity,  especially  as  the  character 
of  the  personal  divinities  became  more  and  more 
humanized  by  the  accretion  of  such  tales.  And 
while  we  find  echoes  of  myth  in  Mdrchen  and 
romance,  we  quite  as  constantly  find  apotheosis 
of  merely  human  romance  and  adventure  in  myth. 
Among  the  literary  peoples,  poets  and  dramatists 


n8     Literature  in  the  Elementary  School 

found  it  often  desirable  to  use  the  foundation 
of  this  group  of  divine  personalities  as  the  start- 
ing-point for  a  performance  purely  artistic;  it 
gave  them  the  immense  advantage  of  starting 
without  explanation  and  preparation,  since  their 
audiences  could  be  counted  upon  to  know  the 
divine  personages  and  circumstances;  and  the 
further  advantage  of  adding  dignity  and  size  to 
their  inventions  by  accrediting  them  to  super- 
human agents.  These  literary  additions,  these 
variations  upon  the  religious  meanings,  invented 
for  artistic  purposes,  often  gradually  incorpo- 
rated themselves  into  the  myth,  and  by  modern 
students  are  not  carefully  distinguished  from  the 
other,  the  religious  and  devotional  elements.  A 
comic  adventure  told  of  Hermes  may  not  have  in 
it  any  more  of  myth  than  a  similar  story  told  of 
Autolycus. 

Literature  finds  much  use  for  material  of  the 
mythical  kind  on  what  we  have  called  the  fourth 
step.  To  express  and  render  concrete,  impulses, 
influences,  and  powers  that  sway  and  dignify 
human  conduct,  and  that  form  and  ennoble  human 
character,  the  literary  artist  gladly  employs  the 
persons  of  the  great  myths.  All  human  experi- 
ence has  elements  and  influences  coming  into  it 
from  an  apparently  mystic  sphere,  that  must 
either  be  described  in  abstract  terms  or  embodied 


Myth  as  Literature  119 

in  concrete  persons  and  symbols.  The  latter  is 
ever  the  method  of  art.  So  we  find  everywhere 
in  literature  the  use  of  the  great  symbols  already 
constituted  in  myth,  or  the  invention  of  new 
symbols  for  the  purpose.  Homer  would  convey 
to  us  the  sense  of  the  presence  that  guided  and 
guarded  the  wise  and  resourceful  Odysseus;  so 
the  stately  Athene,  ages  long  the  goddess  "who 
giveth  skill  in  fair  works,  and  noble  minds," 
comes  and  goes  through  the  poem.  Hauptmann 
would  convey  to  us  in  The  Sunken  Bell,  some 
impression  of  the  magic  and  the  charm  of  that 
beauty  which  lies  in  the  free  soul  and  wild  nature, 
so  he  invents  Rautendelein.  But  neither  Homer 
nor  Hauptmann  is  priest  or  devotee  interpreting 
facts  or  conserving  worship.  They  are  artists 
picturing  human  life  and  introducing,  each  in  its 
place,  the  various  elements  of  human  experience. 

It  is  in  regard  to  this  literary  use  of  myth  that 
there  exists  much  confusion,  and  that  most  mis- 
takes are  made  as  to  the  educational  use  of  myth. 
Many  persons  who  contend  that  "myths"  can  be 
given  to  children  as  literature  call  the  Iliad  and 
the  Odyssey  "myths;"  indeed,  they  are  likely  to 
call  all  legendary  stories  in  which  the  super- 
natural element  is  large  "myths;"  and  they  call 
all  romantic  stories  that  have  become  attached  to 
any  divinity  "myths." 


i2o    Literature  in  the  Elementary  School 

We  should  distinguish  myth  from  saga,  from 
legend,  from  merely  fanciful  symbolistic  tales, 
from  tales  of  human  heroes.  The  Homeric 
poems  make  much  of  the  religious  side  of  human 
nature,  and  the  poet  chose  in  order  to  give  to  his 
action  and  issue  a  superhuman  dignity  to  set  that 
action  in  the  presence  of  the  gods  themselves. 
Yea,  in  the  climaxes  of  the  Titanic  struggle  the 
Powers  themselves  take  a  hand,  so  deeply  does 
the  poet  feel  that  everything  noblest  and  most 
passionate  in  human  nature  is  involved;  and, 
despairing,  as  it  were,  of  conveying  to  us  in 
merely  human  terms  the  implications  of  the  strife 
between  the  two  kinds  of  ideals,  he  sets  Aphro- 
dite over  against  Athene,  not  merely  Trojan 
against  Greek.  But  the  Iliad  is,  for  all  that,  not 
myth  nor  a  collection  of  myths,  but  the  story 
of  the  wrath  of  Achilles — a  very  human  hero, 
who  loved  his  friend.  The  story  of  Baldur  is 
myth — explaining  and  interpreting,  personifying 
and  glorifying,  a  superhuman  influence  and  effect 
beyond  the  reach  of  human  experience;  the  story 
of  Siegfried  is  a  saga,  a  human  experience, 
under  whatever  enlarged  and  idealized  con- 
ditions, yet  still  a  type-experience  of  the  human 
being.  The  garden  of  Eden  is  myth-interpreta- 
tion and  explanation  of  many,  some  the  grimmest, 
facts  of  man's  nature,  and  his  relation  to  a  super- 


Myth  as  Literature  121 

natural  power ;  the  story  of  Abraham  is  a  saga — 
a  typical  history  of  human  experience,  a  typical 
picture  of  human  culture.  The  whole  artistic 
purpose  and  effect  of  the  hero-tale  and  the  saga 
are  different  from  those  of  myth;  the  center  of 
interest  is  a  human  being;  the  emphasis  is  upon 
human  life;  the  meaning  is  upon  the  surface.  In 
true  myth  the  purpose  is  not  artistic,  but  religious ; 
the  emphasis  is  upon  superhuman  activities;  the 
meaning  is  buried  beneath  symbols — the  more 
beautiful  the  myth,  the  more  difficult  and  com- 
plex the  symbol. 

So  one  has  almost  to  smile  at  the  statement, 
commonly  made  that  myth,  implying  all  myth, 
is  childlike,  and  should  therefore  be  given  to  little 
children  as  literature,  especially  while  they  them- 
selves are  in  the  mythopoeic  age — presumably 
from  four  to  seven.  There  are  so  many  fallacies 
in  this  statement  that  one  pauses  embarrassed  at 
his  many  opportunities  of  attack. 

First  as  to  the  childlikeness  of  myth.  There 
are,  of  course,  undeveloped  races  that  have  a 
naive  and  childish  myth,  but  it  is  also  so  crude 
and  unbeautiful  that  it  would  never  commend 
itself  to  one  seeking  artistic  material  for  children. 
The  developed  myths,  those  that  have  achieved 
the  elaboration  of  beautiful  episodes,  are  most 
unchildlike.  They  are  far,  far  away  from  the 


122     Literature  in  the  Elementary  School 

crude  guesses  of  the  primitive  mind.  They  have 
all  been  worked  over,  codified,  filled  with  theo- 
logical and  symbolistic  content  by  priests  and 
poets.  One  can  be  very  sure  that  no  sensible 
teacher  who  has  mastered  the  material,  would 
attempt  to  teach  the  whole  of  any  Hebrew  or 
Greek  or  Scandinavian  myth  as  myth  within  the 
elementary  period.  If  he  takes  one  of  the  espe- 
cially romantic  or  beautiful  episodes  out  of  the 
myth,  he  is  obliged  to  thin  it  out  to  the  compre- 
hension of  the  children,  and  to  mutilate  it  so  as 
to  make  of  it  a  mere  tale.  When  one  reads  Haw- 
thorne's version  of  Pandora  and  Prometheus 
and  realizes  the  mere  babble,  the  flippant  detail, 
under  which  he  has  covered  up  the  grim  Titanic 
story  of  the  yearnings  and  strivings  of  the  human 
soul  for  salvation  here  and  hereafter,  the  very 
deepest  problems  of  temptation  and  sin,  of  rebel- 
lion and  expiation,  he  must  see  clearly  what  is 
most  likely  to  happen  when  a  complex  and 
mature  myth  is  converted  into  a  child's  tale.  To 
make  a  real  test,  leave  the  alien  Greek  myth  and 
try  the  same  process  with  one  that  we  have  built 
into  our  own  religious  consciousness — the  tempta- 
tion and  fall  in  the  Garden  of  Eden;  a  story, 
which  is,  by  the  way,  much  more  naive  in  concep- 
tion and  detail  than  that  of  Prometheus.  We  must 
conclude  that  such  myths  are  not  childlike,  and 


Myth  as  Literature  123 

that  to  make  such  a  version  of  them  as  will  appeal 
to  the  little  child's  attention  and  feeling  gives  but  a 
shallow  and  distorted  view  of  them. 

There  should  undoubtedly  be  a  place  in  edu- 
cation for  the  study  of  myth  as  religion  and  as 
an  influence  in  human  culture;  should  it  not  be 
somewhere  well  within  the  adolescent  period, 
when  the  symbols  of  the  great  myths  attract  and 
do  not  baffle  the  child,  when  their  religious  content 
finds  a  congenial  lodging-place  and  a  sympathetic 
interpretation  in  his  own  experiences?  It  would 
seem  only  fair  to  reserve  the  beautiful  and  rever- 
ential myths  of  the  Greeks,  Romans,  and  Scan- 
dinavians for  this  period,  rather  than  to  use  them 
in  the  age  when  there  is  little  more  to  appeal  to 
than  the  tendency,  so  short-lived  and  shallow- 
rooted  in  the  modern  child,  to  see  personal 
agencies  behind  appearances.  For  this,  confused 
with  a  degree  of  grammatical  uncertainty  of 
speech,  is  practically  all  that  we  can  find  under 
close  analysis,  of  the  mythopoeic  faculty  in  little 
children  brought  up  under  modern  conditions. 

There  are  still  those,  one  discovers,  who  con- 
tend that  myth  should  be  given  to  children  as 
literature,  because  later  in  life — when  they  come 
to  read  the  Aeneid  in  High  School,  or  Paradise 
Lost  in  college,  or  Prometheus  Unbound  or  even 
Macaulay's  essays — they  will  come  upon  refer- 


124    Literature  in  the  Elementary  School 

ences  to  Zeus,  to  the  fall  of  Troy,  to  the  Titans, 
to  Isis  and  Osiris,  and  they  ought  to  be  able  to 
call  up  from  what  they  had  as  literature  in  the 
elementary  school  such  information  as  would 
enable  them  to  understand  these  allusions  and  fill 
out  these  references.  Luckily,  the  number  of 
people  who  hold  the  fundamental  theory  of  edu- 
cation adumbrated  in  this  view  is  becoming  so 
rapidly  smaller  that  this  chapter  will,  let  us  hope, 
be  too  late  to  reach  them.  The  multiplication 
table  is  a  tool ;  the  mechanics  of  reading  and  writ- 
ing are  partially  mere  tools;  but  mythology,  es- 
pecially mythology  substituted  for  literature,  can 
in  no  sense  be  regarded  or  treated  as  a  tool. 

Occasionally  one  meets  the  statement  that 
myth,  and  mythical  episodes,  are  more  imagina- 
tive than  stories  of  human  life,  and  should  there- 
fore be  given  to  little  children  as  literature.  So 
far  as  the  persons  who  hold  this  view  can  be 
pushed  to  definite  terms,  they  mean  either  that 
the  conditions  of  ordinary  human  life  are  com- 
pletely abrogated  in  mythical  stories,  and  that 
therefore  they  are  more  imaginative  than  stories 
of  mere  human  experience  could  be;  or  that  the 
details  given  by  the  imagination  are  arranged  in 
some  more  unusual  way — that  there  is  less  of 
judgment  and  order  in  the  arrangement  than  in 
stories  of  men  and  their  affairs. 


Myth  as  Literature  125 

Of  course,  we  realize  that  the  human  mind 
cannot  invent  ultimate  details  independent  of 
experience.  It  is  in  the  number  and  arrangement 
of  these  details  that  originality  inheres — that  the 
varying  quality  or  quantity  of  imagination  lies. 
Now,  it  is  true  that  in  mythical  stories  the  images, 
the  details,  are  likely  to  be  more  numerous,  and 
to  be  arranged  in  a  less  orderly  manner  than  in 
an  art  story ;  this  is  of  the  nature  of  myth. 

Ruskin,  in  The  Queen  of  the  Air,  makes  so 
clear  a  statement  of  this  principle  that  I  shall 
borrow  it  for  this  chapter: 

A  myth  in  its  simplest  definition  is  a  story  with  a 
meaning  attached  to  it  other  than  it  seems  to  have  at  first; 
and  the  fact  that  it  has  such  a  meaning  is  generally 
marked  by  some  of  its  circumstances  being  extraordinary, 
or,  in  the  common  use  of  the  word,  unnatural.  Thus,  if 
I  tell  you  that  Hercules  killed  a  water  serpent  in  the  lake 
of  Lerna,  and  if  I  mean,  and  you  understand,  nothing 
more  than  that  fact,  the  story,  whether  true  or  false,  is 
not  a  myth.  But  if,  by  telling  you  this,  I  mean  that  Her- 
cules purified  the  stagnation  of  many  streams  from 
deadly  miasmata,  my  story,  however  simple,  is  a  true 
myth,  only,  as,  if  I  left  it  in  that  simplicity,  you  would 
probably  look  for  nothing  beyond,  it  will  be  wise  in  me 
to  surprise  your  attention  by  adding  some  singular  cir- 
cumstance; for  instance,  that  the  water-snake  had  several 
heads,  which  revived  as  fast  as  they  were  killed,  and 
which  poisoned  even  the  foot  that  trod  upon  them  as  they 
slept.  And  in  proportion  to  the  fulness  of  intended  mean- 


126     Literature  in  the  Elementary  School 

ing  I  shall  probably  multiply  and  refine  upon  these  im- 
probabilities; or,  suppose  if,  instead  of  desiring  only  to 
tell  you  that  Hercules  purified  a  marsh,  I  wished  you  to 
understand  .[that  he  contended  with  envy  and  evil 
ambition],  I  might  tell  you  that  this  serpent  was  formed 
by  the  goddess  whose  pride  was  in  the  trial  of  Hercules; 
that  its  place  of  abode  was  by  a  palm  tree;  that  for 
every  head  of  it  that  was  cut  off,  ten  rose  up  with 
renewed  life;  and  that  the  hero  found  at  last  he  could 
not  kill  the  creature  at  all  by  cutting  its  heads  off  or 
crushing  them,  but  only  by  burning  them  down;  and 
that  the  midmost  of  them  could  not  be  killed  even  in  that 
way,  but  had  to  be  buried  alive.  Only  in  proportion  as 
I  mean  more  I  shall  appear  more  absurd  in  my  statement. 

Is  it  fair  to  conclude  that,  if  there  is  any 
ground  for  the  statement  that  myth  is  more 
imaginative  than  literature,  it  is  either  that  it  is 
extremely  symbolistic,  constantly  substituting  one 
thing  for  another,  or  that,  not  being  art,  it  heaps 
up  details  profusely,  unregulated  by  the  ordering 
and  constructive  side  of  the  imagination?  In  the 
one  case,  it  would  have  small  disciplinary  value 
for  the  class ;  in  the  other,  it  would  be  hopelessly 
beyond  their  comprehension;  and  in  either  case 
it  would  not  perform  the  characteristic  service  of 
literature. 

There  is  much  more  to  be  said  by  those  who 
feel  that  they  find  in  the  mythic  stories  a  large 
and  vague  atmosphere,  a  sort  of  cosmic  stage 
where  things  bulk  large  and  sound  simple,  a  great 


Myth  as  Literature  127 

resounding  room  where  the  children  feel  uncon- 
sciously the  movement  of  large  things.  But  this 
is  a  religious  mood.  It  is  precisely  the  response 
we  should  like  to  have  when  we  tell  our  children 
the  Hebrew  myth  of  the  creation — an  emotional 
reaction,  vague  but  deep,  to  the  dim  and  sublime 
images  of  the  Days — a  response  that  constitutes 
itself  forevermore  a  part  of  his  religious  experi- 
ence. If  we  are  willing  that  he  should  have  a 
similar  reaction  upon  the  story  of  Zeus  and  the 
Titans,  if  we  are  willing  that  he  should  lay  this 
down,  too,  among  the  foundations  of  his  religious 
life,  by  all  means  tell  it.  But  we  can  not  quite 
fairly  tell  one  to  awaken  a  religious  response,  and 
the  other  an  artistic  one. 

This  is  all  quite  consistent  with  an  utter  repudi- 
ation of  a  hard  and  fast  "faculty"  education. 
There  are,  of  course,  borders  where  myth  and 
literature  inextricably  intermingle,  as  there  are 
certain  effects  of  the  teaching  of  mythical  epi- 
sodes which  are  not  to  be  distinguished  from  those 
of  the  teaching  of  purely  literary  material.  But 
the  teacher  should  clear  up  his  mind  upon  this 
point;  telling  a  romantic  adventure  of  a  god  is 
not  teaching  myth;  telling  a  story  of  a  hero  in 
which  the  gods  take  a  share  is  not  teaching  myth, 
any  more  thaa  the  telling  of  the  story  of  the  Holy 
Grail  is  teaching  Christianity;  symbolistic  stories 


128     Literature  in  the  Elementary  School 
i 

whose  setting  happens  to  be  Greek  or  Roman  or 
Scandinavian  are  not  myth.  It  should  not  be 
difficult  to  handle  for  the  children  such  stories  as 
contain  a  large  amount  of  religious  element.  To 
have  them  get  out  of  the  Odyssey  the  character- 
istic and  desirable  effect,  it  is  necessary  to  give 
only  a  few  words  as  to  the  offices  of  Athene  and 
Poseidon  in  the  action,  and  then  put  the  emphasis 
where  Homer  puts  it — upon  Odysseus,  his  charac- 
ter and  his  experiences.  It  is  no  more  necessary 
in  reading  the  Odyssey  to  go  into  the  myth  of  the 
divinities  concerned,  than  it  would  be  in  teaching 
Hamlet  to  make  an  exhaustive  excursus  into  the 
pneumatology  of  the  Ghost. 

Now,  there  are  a  great  many  folk-tales  that 
out  of  convention  have  taken  on  as  a  sort  of 
afterthought,  as  it  were,  an  explanatory  character. 
This  can  be  noticed  in  the  charming  Zuni  folk- 
tales collected  by  Gushing.  Often  the  pourquoi 
idea  is  appended  in  the  final  paragraph,  a  belated 
bit  of  piety  not  at  all  inherent  in  the  tale.  Then 
there  are,  of  course,  a  great  many  fanciful  pour- 
quoi tales,  both  folk  and  modern,  whose  purpose 
was  never  more  than  playful.  These  cannot  be 
seriously  regarded  as  myth,  and  must  be  esti- 
mated on  their  merits  as  stories. 

It  is  hard  to  be  so  tolerant  with  the  modern 
imitations  of  mythical  tales  designed  to  render 


Myth  as  Literature  129 

palatable  and  pretty  facts  in  the  life  of  the  world 
about  us.  One  cannot  believe  much  in  the  dew- 
fairies  and  frost-fairies  and  flower-angels,  speak- 
ing plants  and  conversing  worms,  whose  mission 
in  life  is  really  a  gentle  species  of  university- 
extension  lectures.  Such  stories  are  not  litera- 
ture; neither  are  they  good  technical  knowledge. 
Is  it  not  true,  as  we  shall  elsewhere  have  occasion 
to  show,  that,  with  our  modern  facilities  for 
teaching  the  facts  of  nature,  we  can  make  them 
attractive  and  impressive  rather  by  showing  them 
as  they  are,  than  by  attributing  to  them  merely 
fanciful  and  often  petty  personalities  and  genii? 

Of  couse,  in  very  advanced  scientific  theory 
we  are  driven  again  to  myth-making.  One  can- 
not speak  of  radio-activity  except  in  terms  of 
personality,  nor  of  the  final  processes  of  biology 
without  using  terms  implying  purpose  and  choice. 
So  does  the  wheel  come  full  circle  and  all  our 
lives  we  are  mythopoeists.  But  myth  is  not  liter- 
ature. 

As  has  been  intimated  previously,  it  would 
seem  that  the  time  to  teach  myth  as  myth  is  much 
later — perhaps  within  the  secondary  period,  when 
it  can  be  examined  as  religion,  or  when  the  chil- 
dren have  gained  enough  experience,  and  de- 
veloped enough  dramatic  imagination,  to  take  holH 
of  it  as  a  vital  element  in  another  culture.  Tnc 


130    Literature  in  the  Elementary  School 

place  for  the  study  of  the  great  symbolistic  stories, 
whose  background  happens  to  be  another  people's 
myth,  such  as  King  Midas,  or  Prometheus,  or 
Apollo  with  Admetus,  should  be,  in  any  event,  as 
late  as  the  seventh  grade,  by  which  time  the  chil- 
dren are  able  to  look  below  the  surface  and  begin 
to  understand  the  types  and  symbols  of  art. 


CHAPTER  VIII 

HERO-TALES    AND    ROMANCES 

In  the  days  before  books,  when  a  tale  was  a 
tale,  they  knew  how  to  conserve  interest  and 
economize  material.  When  a  hero  had  gained 
some  popular  favor,  had  established  his  character, 
had  drawn  about  him  a  circle  of  friends,  and  had 
just  proved  himself  worthy  of  our  love,  he  was 
not  lightly  cast  aside  for  a  new  and  unknown 
hero.  He  was  given  new  conquests,  new  sorrows 
were  heaped  upon  him,  new  minstrels  arose  to  sing 
his  fame,  until  there  gathered  about  him  and  his 
group  of  friends  many,  many  songs  and  tales. 
Luckily,  in  many  cases  there  came  a  great  artist, 
bard  or  romancer,  who  gathered  these  scattered 
songs  and  tales  together,  gave  them  a  greater  or 
less  coherence  and  something  of  unity,  and  so 
preserved  them.  Some  of  these  cycles  of  hero- 
tales  are  adapted  for  the  delight  and  discipline  of 
the  elementary  children.  From  the  cosy  and 
homely  atmosphere  of  the  Mdrchen — the  mother- 
and  nurse-stories — they  would  pass  naturally  to 
the  wider  and  bolder  world  of  the  epic  tales.  The 
spirit  of  these  tales  harmonizes  easily  with  the 
general  tone  of  their  work.  They  are  simple  and 

13* 


132    Literature  in  the  Elementary  School 

bold  in  spirit,  full  of  action,  generous  and  noble 
in  plan  and  idea ;  they  conserve  interest  and  atten- 
tion by  centering  about  a  single  person  or  a  group ; 
they  are  made  up  of  separable  adventures  or  inci- 
dents, which  take  shape,  or  with  a  little  editing 
from  the  teacher  may  be  made  to  take  shape,  as 
manageable  and  artistic  wholes ;  it  is  easy  to  asso- 
ciate other  bits  of  literature  with  them,  because, 
in  the  first  place,  the  tales  themselves  reflect 
aspects  of  life  and  nature  that  have  appealed  to 
artists  in  all  ages,  and  because  they  have  them- 
selves inspired  many  more  modern  artists.  It  is 
therefore  easy  to  constitute  one  of  these  cycles 
the  center  of  the  work  in  literature  for  some  long 
period — in  some  cases  for  a  whole  year — joining 
to  it  such  harmonious  or  contrasted  bits  of  litera- 
ture as  the  class  may  seem  to  need. 

Some  consideration  of  the  best  known  and 
most  available  of  the  hero-tales  may  help  in  the 
matter  of  choosing. 

The  Iliad  is  not  available  without  a  great  deal 
of  editing  and  rearranging  for  such  use  in  class. 
There  are  several  reasons  for  this,  the  first  being 
its  want  of  an  easily  grasped  unity.  Doubtless  the 
mature  and  experienced  reader  finds  the  essential 
unity  of  the  Iliad  more  satisfying  and  artistic  than 
that  which  comes  of  a  more  compact  and  complete 
plot.  But  the  children  cannot  easily  see  that  the 


Hero-Tales  and  Romances  133 

history  of  Achilles'  wrath  and  love  is  a  complete 
thing.  To  them  the  action  seems  to  be  suspended, 
the  events  left  without  issue,  the  poem  unprovided 
with  a  legitimate  ending.  The  organization  and 
the  organizing  principle  are  obscure  to  children, 
since  Achilles'  emotional  history  cannot  easily  be 
made  clear  or  interesting  to  them.  Homer's  splen- 
did art  in  glorifying  Hector  and  dignifying  the 
Trojan  cause  as  a  means  of  reinforcing  Achilles' 
triumph,  and  deepening  the  sense  of  the  Greek 
victory,  is  likely  to  be  lost  on  the  children,  while 
it  leaves  them  with  a  hopelessly  divided  sympathy. 
Helen,  to  a  mature  mind  so  full  of  interest  ethical 
and  artistic,  is  beyond  the  comprehension  of  the 
children  as  anything  more  than  a  lay  figure.  The 
vast  enrichment  of  epic  detail  that  has  gathered 
into  the  Iliad,  constituting  it  for  the  grown-up 
lover  of  all  the  arts  an  inexhaustible  mine  of 
archaic,  artistic,  and  psychic  wealth,  has,  except 
in  a  few  picturesque  details,  which  the  teacher 
must  make  special  effort  to  bring  before  them, 
no  charm  for  the  children,  seeming  to  them  to 
cumber  and  delay  the  action.  So  the  Iliad  as  it 
stands  is  not  serviceable  for  the  grades  in  litera- 
ture. 

But,  as  we  all  know,  the  poems  that  form  the 
Iliad  were  songs  out  of  a  much  larger  cycle.  If 
one  desires  to  use  sections  of  the  Iliad,  then,  it 


134     Literature  in  the  Elementary  School 

is  comparatively  easy  to  collect  out  of  all  the 
material  a  complete  and  unified  form  of  the  legend 
of  the  siege  and  downfall  of  Troy — using  the 
Homeric  episodes  when  it  is  possible.  From 
sources  other  than  the  Iliad  must  be  gathered  the 
causes  of  the  war,  the  education  of  Achilles, 
the  summons  of  Odysseus,  the  sacrifice-  of 
Iphegenia,  the  death  of  Achilles,  the  building  of 
the  wooden  horse,  and  the  fall  of  Troy.  Into  this 
can  be  inserted  in  their  places  the  parts  selected 
from  the  Iliad — perhaps  the  quarrel  in  the  assem- 
bly from  the  second  book ;  the  deeds  of  Diomedes, 
from  the  fifth  and  sixth;  the  visit  of  Hector 
within  the  city  and  his  farewell  to  Andromache, 
from  the  sixth;  the  Trojan  triumph,  in  the 
seventh ;  the  vengeance  upon  Dolon,  in  the  tenth ; 
the  main  incidents  of  the  battle  among  the  ships ; 
the  deeds  and  death  of  Patroclus;  Achilles'  arm- 
ing and  his  appearance  in  the  fight;  the  main 
incidents  of  the  funeral  of  Patroclus;  the  visit 
of  Priam  to  Achilles.  These  should  be  arranged 
in  a  sort  of  "say  and  sing"  narrative,  the  events 
previous  to  the  action  of  the  Iliad,  and  those  sub- 
sequent to  it,  to  be  told  in  prose  narrative;  those 
taken  from  the  Iliad  itself  to  be  read  or  recited  in 
some  poetical  form,  linked  together,  of  course, 
by  a  running  and  rapid  narrative.  Only  a  verse 
translation — or,  if  a  prose  translation,  one  much 


Hero-Tales  and  Romances  135 

more  picturesque  and  eloquent  than  any  we  have 
yet  had — will  at  all  represent  the  nobility  of  the 
Iliad.  Bryant's  translation  is  the  best  we  now 
have,  and  it  is  too  formal  and  difficult  to  be 
understood  by  the  children  to  whom  one  desires 
to  give  the  hero-tales. 

One  can  easily  see  that  an  arrangement  of  the 
Iliad  made  under  all  these  conditions  would  not 
finally  convey  to  the  children  many  of  the  best 
things  we  want  to  give  them  in  their  literature. 

The  case  is  quite  different  with  the  Odyssey. 
It  is  the  child's  own  cycle,  full  of  the  interests  and 
elements  that  delight  him  while  they  cultivate 
him.  The  adventures  are  linked  together  by  the 
central  hero,  and  by  the  design  of  getting  him 
home;  the  cycle,  therefore,  presents  a  clear 
unity,  and  a  unity  of  the  kind  that  takes  hold 
upon  the  children.  The  adventures  themselves 
organize  easily  into  smaller  separable  wholes. 
They  are  always  interesting,  offering  us  the 
varieties  of  the  grotesque,  the  humorous,  the 
sensational,  the  horrible,  the  beautiful,  the  sub- 
lime; and  they  are  practically  all  on  the  imagina- 
tive level  of  the  children  in  the  classes  to  which 
they  are  otherwise  adapted.  The  details  are 
charming  and  adapted  to  interest  the  children, 
with  very  little  effort  on  the  part  of  the  teacher. 
It  is  quite  unnecessary  to  point  out  how  the  occu- 


136     Literature  in  the  Elementary  School 

pations  and  employments,  the  beautiful  buildings 
and  objects — plates,  cups,  clasps — the  raft,  the 
palace  and  garden  of  Alcinoous,  the  loom  of 
Penelope,  the  lustrous  woven  robes,  the  cottage  of 
the  good  Eumaeus,  the  noble  swineherd,  build  up  a 
world  full  of  charm,  not  only  for  the  grown-up 
reader,  but  for  children  if  they  are  being  properly 
taught.  There  is  throughout  the  poem  what  Pater 
called  the  atmosphere  of  refined  craftsmanship, 
and  all  the  occupations  and  tasks  of  men  here 
appear  surrounded  by  the  entrancing  halo  of  art. 
Odysseus  combines  in  himself  all  those  character- 
istics that  endear  a  hero  to  the  child  and  the 
childlike  mind.  He  is  active  and  ever-ready; 
strong,  too,  beyond  the  measure  of  any  ordinary 
man;  quick  in  the  battle;  good  at  a  game,  re- 
sourceful and  handy  in  any  emergency;  subtle 
and  quickwitted ;  full  of  tricks  and  riddles ;  equip- 
ped at  every  point  for  the  effective  undoing  of 
his  foes.  Inevitably  in  any  class  of  modern  chil- 
dren as  old  as  the  nine-ten-year  grade  the  deli- 
cate problem  of  Odysseus'  moral  character  will 
come  up  for  discussion.  It  is  not  likely  that  chil- 
dren younger  than  this  will  open  the  matter  them- 
selves, or  take  any  vital  interest  in  the  discussion. 
For,  as  I  have  said  elsewhere,  subtlety  is  a  child's 
virtue,  and  any  device  by  which  their  hero,  who 
is  in  the  main  just,  outwits  or  removes  hostile 


Hero-Tales  and  Romances  137 

forces,  is  acceptable.  For  the  older  children,  who 
are  somewhat  "instructed,"  and  who  on  the 
average  will  have  acquired  sufficient  dramatic 
sympathy  to  apprehend  an  alien  standard,  a  few 
words  as  to  the  Greek  notions  of  truthfulness, 
together  with  a  few  explanations  as  to  the  privi- 
leges allowed  to  an  adventurer  hard  beset  by  trick- 
ery and  stupidity,  will  generally  clear  the  ground ; 
these  explanations  should  take  the  emphasis  from 
this  aspect  of  Odysseus'  character  and  leave  the 
children  free  to  place  it  where  it  belongs.  If  the 
Odyssey  were  used  with  children  older  than  ten, 
their  questions  as  to  Odysseus'  truthfulness  might 
afford  a  good  occasion  for  warning  them  to 
expect  some  human  imperfections  in  a  hero  with 
whom  in  most  respects  they  are  in  complete  sym- 
pathy. This  point  of  view,  acquired  somewhat 
early,  saves  one  many  shocks  and  misconceptions 
in  later  reading.  It  should  not  be  necessary  to  say 
that  the  discussion  of  Odysseus  should  not 
amount  to  "character-study,"  and  should  not  drift 
anywhere  near  hair-splitting  moral  discrimina- 
tions. 

All  teachers  will  agree  that  it  is  better  to  start 
the  Odyssey  with  the  fifth  book — the  experience 
of  Odysseus  himself — leaving  the  Telemachiad 
unread,  or  to  be  read  later.  Into  his  few  intro- 
ductory stories  the  teacher  should  fit  some  account 


138     Literature  in  the  Elementary  School 

of  the  iniquities  of  the  suitors  and  the  fact  of 
the  journey  of  Telemachus — this  to  pave  the  way 
for  the  delightful  story  of  his  return.  For  our 
generation — and,  one  is  tempted  to  believe,  for 
several  generations  to  come — Professor  Palmer's 
prose  translation  of  the  Odyssey  is  the  ideal  read- 
ing version.  For  the  sake  of  the  slight  heighten- 
ing of  style,  the  class  might  occasionally  hear 
recited  a  passage  in  Bryant's  verse  translation. 
But  the  poetical,  musical,  faintly  archaic  prose 
of  Professor  Palmer  has  caught  perfectly  the  gen- 
tle spiritual  tone  of  the  Odyssey. 

I  have  known  a  class  of  nine-ten-year  children 
conducted  through  the  Odyssey  making  a  side 
interest  of  the  Realien,  the  pottery  and  weaving, 
and  metal  working.  Such  hand-work  was  a  part 
of  their  school  tasks,  and  there  were  collections 
of  pottery  and  fabrics  which  they  could  be  taken 
to  see.  The  experience  seemed  to  co-operate 
with  their  own  hand-work  to  develop  in  them 
some  of  that  artistic  love  of  beautiful  things — 
things  costly,  but  not  expensive — that  pervades 
the  Iliad  and  the  Odyssey;  and  they  were  dis- 
tinctly helped  on  toward  that  attitude  we  desire 
for  every  child,  that  of  "reverence  for  the  life 
of  man  upon  the  earth."  The  Odyssey  will  be 
used,  however,  in  schools  where  there  is  no 
handwork  and  no  chance  of  seeing  collections  of 


Hero-Tales  and  Romances  139 

suitable  objects.  Pictures  are  of  some  service 
in  getting  the  image  of  objects — colored  prints 
of  Greek  pottery  and  costume.  Engelmann  and 
Anderson's  Atlas  of  the  Homeric  Poems  seems  to 
help  and  interest  the  children,  though  there  is  con- 
stant danger  that  the  archaic  forms  will  seem 
merely  ludicrous  to  many  of  them.  The  teacher 
may  correct  this  by  explaining  them  as  decora- 
tion and  as  traditional  figures.  But  we  should 
not  depend  much  upon  black-and-white  print  to 
help  young  children  to  visualize  objects  and  scenes 
in  which  color  and  motion  are  all-important 

Now,  what  follows  must  be  taken  as  sugges- 
tive, and  not  as  a  pat  formula:  You  can  enrich 
your  central  bit  of  literature  by  other  literature 
in  one  of  two  ways — by  reinforcing  the  impres- 
sion derived  from  the  main  story,  or  counteract- 
ing it.  And  every  long  story  or  cycle  of  stories, 
particularly  the  heroic  cycles,  has  its  characteristic 
atmosphere  that  needs  both  to  be  reinforced  and 
to  be  counteracted.  It  is  true,  too,  that  practi- 
cally all  the  stories  we  use  for  the  elementary 
children  are  translations  or  derived  versions  of 
some  sort,  and  do  not  therefore  exhibit  the 
smaller  beauties  of  literary  form.  It  is  there- 
fore well  to  join  with  them  poems  or  other  bits 
of  literature  which  emphasize  the  matter  of 
inevitableness  of  form. 


140    Literature  in  the  Elementary  School 

By  way  of  enlarging  and  varying  the  atmos- 
phere of  the  Odyssey,  we  should  not  add  other 
Greek  things,  because  we  are  not  trying  to  teach 
our  class  about  Greek  civilization,  nor  to  initiate 
them  into  the  Greek  spirit,  still  less  to  give  them 
instruction  in  Greek  legend  and  mythology.  We 
should  rather  read  them  ballads  and  lyrics  which 
harmonize  with  the  human  spirit  of  the  Odyssey, 
or  which  supply  something  which  the  Odyssey 
fails  to  give.  For  example,  since  there  is  so  much 
of  the  sea  in  the  story,  it  would  be  a  good  moment 
to  teach  the  children  some  of  the  fine  things  in 
English  verse  about  the  water.  They  will  cer- 
tainly notice  the  characteristic  Greek  dread  and 
terror  of  the  sea — "the  unvintaged,  unpastured, 
homeless  brine."  It  would  be  well  to  balance  this 
in  their  minds  by  some  of  those  verses  which 
reflect  the  English  mastery  of  the  sea  and  the 
romance  of  modern  sea-going — some  of  Kipling's 
sea-ballads,  for  example,  or  such  simple  things  as 
Barry  Cornwall's  "The  sea,  the  sea,  the  open 
sea." 

We  should  not  fail  to  build  upon  another  domi- 
nant note  in  the  Odyssey  much  that  we  should 
like  the  children  to  have — the  note  of  home  and 
home-coming,  the  hearth-stone,  and  the  shelter- 
ing roof.  Of  the  exciting  adventure  and  the  joy 
of  physical  contest  they  will  get  enough  from  the 


Hero-Tales  and  Romances  141 

stories  themselves.  It  is  not  necessary  to  say  again 
that  the  judgments  given  here  as  to  the  actual 
practical  choice,  are  always  to  be  taken  as  sug- 
gestions, not  as  hard  and  fast  directions.  Every 
teacher  may  have,  and  should  have,  his  own  idea, 
both  as  to  how  his  central  bit  of  literature  should 
be  supplemented,  and  as  to  whether  or  not  it  needs 
supplementing.  Later  I  shall  give  the  titles  of 
certain  of  these  minor  things — still  by  way  of 
suggestion;  ballads  and  lyrics  that  have  been 
found  to  harmonize  with  the  Odyssey  either  as 
enforcement  or  addition. 

Most  elementary  schools  have  found  now  the 
value  of  the  Robin  Hood  legend.  The  bluff,  open 
qualities,  the  effective  activities,  the  wholesome 
objectivity  of  these  activities,  the  breezy  atmos- 
phere with  which  the  stories  surround  them- 
selves, make  them  acceptable  in  many  aspects. 
Teachers  are  saved  most  of  the  labor  of  mak- 
ing their  own  digest  of  the  Robin  Hood  material 
by  Howard  Pyle's  Robin  Hood.  In  this  he  has 
drawn  together  the  whole  legend,  using  not  only 
the  English  ballads,  but  Scott  and  Peacock,  and 
whatever  scattered  hints  and  details  he  could 
gather  from  what  must  have  been  a  pretty  ex- 
haustive reading  of  English  romantic  literature. 
Everywhere  there  are  charming  reminiscences  of 
Chaucer,  of  Spenser,  of  Shakespeare;  echoes  of 


142     Literature  in  the  Elementary  School 

ballad  and  song  and  romance;  making,  on  the 
whole,  a  notable  introduction  to  literature  and  the 
literary  method.  One  quickly  finds  that  it  is  much 
too  literary  in  places  for  younger  children  and  has 
to  be  simplified;  here  and  there  are  long  idyllic 
descriptions  that  the  fifth  grade,  eager  for  the 
story,  will  not  brook ;  occasionally  a  page  of  false 
sentimentality  that  the  teacher  with  a  true  ear  will 
infallibly  detect  and  skip.  But  these  minor  things 
can  be  forgiven  in  view  of  the  sheer  energy,  the 
marvelous  objectivity,  the  epic  colorlessness,  of 
the  book  as  a  whole.  Readings  from  the  ballads 
themselves  should  be  interspersed,  read  by  the 
teacher  to  the  class.  These  readings  should  again 
be  arranged  in  the  cont-fable  fashion,  turning 
into  suitable  form  the  less  interesting  passages, 
and  then  reading  in  their  original  verse  form  the 
dramatic  and  picturesque  parts.  It  need  not  be 
said  that  much  better  poems  may  be  found  than 
those  which  Pyle  has  composed  for  his  Robin 
Hood. 

Timid  parents  and  teachers  who  have  never 
used  these  stories  have  some  misgivings  as 
to  the  effect  of  the  strenuous,  not  to  say  lawless, 
atmosphere.  They  say  that  the  burden  of  ap- 
proval is  placed  upon  an  outlaw,  who  constantly 
and  successfully  flouts  the  officers  and  processes 
of  the  law ;  that  the  merry-men  are,  after  all,  the 


Hero-Tales  and  Romances  143 

gang;  that  the  multiplicity  of  quarrels  and 
cracked  crowns  accustoms  the  children  to  blood 
and  violence;  in  short,  that  the  legitimate  out- 
come of  a  genuine  dramatic  sympathy  with  the 
story  is  general  Hooliganism.  The  good  teach- 
ers who  have  used  the  stories  never  say  these 
things  because  they  never  see  these  results.  It 
needs  but  a  word  to  transfer  the  emphasis  from 
Robin  Hood's  outlawry  to  the  cruel  and  unjust 
laws  against  which  he  stood;  to  keep  to  the 
front  his  generosity  to  his  men,  his  tenderness 
toward  those  in  trouble,  his  sense  of  personal 
honor,  his  readiness  to  accept  and  acknowledge  a 
fair  defeat,  the  loyalty  of  his  men.  It  is  the 
transfiguration  of  the  gang;  and  as  a  social  mat- 
ter it  is  the  transfiguration  rather  than  the 
destruction  of  the  gang  which  we  desire  to  ac- 
complish. One  hastens  to  acknowledge,  how- 
ever, that  the  rough-and-tumble  atmosphere  of 
the  stories  calls  for  some  antidote,  which  we  may 
find  partly  in  the  literature  we  choose  to  accom- 
pany this  cycle.  Very  naturally  one  thinks  of  the 
greenwood,  and  at  once  finds  many  bits  that  fit 
into  the  scenic  background  of  the  story  and  intro- 
duce the  gentler  aspects  of  the  woods  and  wood- 
land things. 

With  the  Odyssey    we   should    choose    some 
things  to  reinforce  the  love  of  home  and  the  long- 


144    Literature  in  the  Elementary  School 

ing  for  the  hearth-fire,  and  we  must  use  some  of 
the  same  things  to  provide  an  element  otherwise 
lacking  in  the  Robin  Hood,  and  to  modify  the 
fascination  of  the  wildwood  life  and  the  unat- 
tached condition.  Some  of  the  ideas  on  the  sur- 
face of  the  stories  may  be  enlarged  and  enriched 
— as  loyalty  and  devotion  to  a  leader.  There 
is  a  fine  opportunity  to  launch  into  the  children's 
experience  upon  the  wave  of  their  enthusiasm  for 
Robin  Hood,  other  and  nobler  ideals  of  the  leader 
and  the  hero;  though  we  must  never  expect  the 
child,  glowing  with  the  satisfaction  of  deeds  done, 
to  give  any  appreciation  worth  considering  to  the 
suffering  hero  or  to  the  heroism  of  peace.  This 
properly  belongs  to  a  much  later  period — to  what 
it  is  not  mere  jargon  to  call  the  lyric  age,  when 
some  more  effective  appeal  can  be  made  to  those 
powers  that  come  of  introspection. 

The  cycles  of  stories  of  King  Arthur  un- 
questionably contain  much  that  should  contribute 
to  the  pleasure  and  wholesome  culture  of  the  ele- 
mentary child.  Epic  activity,  bold  and  generous 
deeds  tempered  by  gentleness  and  reverence — this 
is  the  atmosphere  of  the  best  of  the  Arthur  stories, 
and  it  is  precisely  the  atmosphere  into  which  one 
longs  to  lead  the  older  children  of  the  elementary 
school.  But  these  good  and  suitable  Arthur 
stories  are  so  tied  up  with  others  entirely  unsuit- 


Hero-Tales  and  Romances  145 

able  that  the  choosing  and  arranging  of  them 
becomes  the  task  of  the  expert  psychologist  and 
critic.  When  one  chooses  stories  out  of  this 
legend,  he  must  do  with  his  material — his  Malory, 
his  Chretien,  his  Mabinogion,  his  Tennyson — as 
these' collectors  and  artists  did  with  theirs:  regard 
it  as  the  stuff  of  human  nature  and  life,  a  store- 
house of  treasures  out  of  which  he  may  draw 
according  to  his  pleasure  or  his  need.  In  this 
case  it  is  the  safe  pleasure  and  the  artistic 
needs  of  his  children  that  will  dictate  his  choice. 
And  he  must  know  thoroughly  well  his  stories  and 
his  children;  for  the  pitfalls  are  many — quite  as 
many  in  Chretien  de  Troyes  and  Malory  as  in 
Tennyson. 

The  first  of  the  pitfalls  to  be  avoided  is  that 
fantastic  feudal  gallantry  which  Chretien  and 
Malory  substituted  for  the  forthright  chivalric 
business  and  earnestness  of  the  older  legendary 
stories.  In  the  Song  of  Roland  one  fights  for 
reasons  of  patriotism  or  religion;  in  the  Arthur 
romances,  and  others  of  their  type,  one  fights  for 
his  lady's  sake.  In  the  elementary  grades  the  chil- 
dren are  still  undifferentiated  human  beings,  and 
should  be  kept  so.  To  thrust  upon  them  sugges- 
tions of  "ladies"  to  be  "won"  and  to  be  "served" 
is  to  usher  them  into  an  unknown  world,  an 
undemocratic  and  unbrotherly  world  from  which 


146     Literature  in  the  Elementary  School 

we  should  like  to  keep  them,  especially  the  girls, 
as  long  as  possible.  While  it  is  not  easy  to  leave 
out  this  element  in  choosing  material  from  these 
cycles,  it  is  possible  to  treat  it  lightly,  since  there 
is  in  the  same  material  a  sufficiency  of  lions  to  be 
hunted,  giants  to  be  overcome,  and  hostile  Pay- 
nims  to  be  exterminated. 

Everyone  who  has  ever  read  much  with  chil- 
dren knows  that  to  normal  children  before  their 
thirteenth  year  the  psychology  and  modus  oper- 
andi  of  love  and  love-making,  innocent  or  guilty, 
are  so  alien  as  to  pass  harmlessly  by  them  as  a 
mere  bit  of  the  machinery  of  a  story,  when  these 
notions  do  constitute  such  a  bit  of  machinery  in  a 
story  otherwise  suitable.  But  it  is  a  mistake  to 
choose  matter  which  obliges  us  to  linger  with  the 
little  people  over  these  experiences  or  to  empha- 
size them.  He  who  would  retell  the  Arthur 
stories  must  be  wary  here,  so  difficult  is  it  to  put 
together  any  series  of  the  adventures  that  will  at 
all  represent  the  material,  and  constitute  a  whole, 
without  using  the  scarlet  thread  of  guilty  passion, 
or  substituting  for  it  something  "nice"  but  wishy- 
washy.  We  have  only  to  compare  the  grim 
justice  of  Malory's  Modred  with  Tennyson's 
sentimental  and  unconvincing  handling  of  his 
character  and  function. 

When  Malory  wove  into  the  Arthur  cycle  the 


Hero-Tales  and  Romances  147 

legend  of  the  Holy  Grail,  he  introduced  an  ele- 
ment very  hard  to  handle  for  children — that 
religious  mysticism,  not  to  say  fanaticism,  which 
Tennyson  chose  to  set  as  the  pivotal  motive  of  the 
downfall  of  the  Table  Round.  Tennyson,  writ- 
ing for  mature  modern  readers  a  deeply  symbol- 
istic poem,  and  presenting  a  whole  cycle,  could, 
stroke  by  stroke,  build  up  the  impression  of  this 
burning  zeal,  this  hypnotic  trance  of  enthusiasm, 
that  led  men  away  after  wandering  fires,  for- 
getting labor  and  duty.  But  simplified  to  fit  the 
comprehension  of  the  wholesome  twelve-year-old 
it  is  likely  to  appear  a  vague  and  mistaken  piety, 
producing  a  practical  effect  quite  out  of  propor- 
tion to  its  importance. 

To  the  modern  teacher,  with  the  witchery  of 
the  Tennysonian  music  in  his  blood,  it  is  all  but 
impossible  to  keep  out  of  prominence  that  sym- 
bolism which  lay  obvious  upon  the  surface,  even 
in  the  Morte  d' Arthur,  but  which  Tennyson 
heightened  into  an  almost  oppressive  system  of 
sophisticated  and  parochial  doctrine.  An  occa- 
sional symbolistic  nut  to  crack  is  not  a  bad  thing 
for  the  older  children  of  the  grades.  But  would 
it  not  be  a  mistake  to  immerse  them  in  a  great 
system  of  symbolism?  To  the  younger  children 
the  sacred  outside  appearance,  the  entrancing 


148     Literature  in  the  Elementary  School 

Schein,  of  things  is  best,  and  symbolistic  art  only 
baffles  them  or  unduly  forces  their  powers. 

The  spirit  of  dilettante  adventure  which  per- 
vades the  mediaeval  romances  gives  them  a  tone 
entirely  different  from  that  of  the  epics.  In  these 
latter  the  activities  attach  themselves  to  deeds  that 
have  to  be  done,  to  misfortunes  that  the  hero 
would  willingly  have  avoided.  Some  of  these 
sought-out  adventures  have  crept  insidiously  into 
Howard  Pyle's  Robin  Hood;  but  they  are 
entirely  foreign  to  the  spirit  of  the  original  epos. 
The  idea  of  "worshipfully  winning  worship," 
of  seeking  adventure  for  mere  adventure's  sake, 
or  for  the  mere  display  of  one's  own  powers,  or 
for  the  sake  of  getting  trained,  is  a  corrupting  one 
in  our  society,  and  should  not  be  implanted  in 
our  children's  consciousness.  Like  the  old  epic 
heroes,  what  we  have  to  do  we  will  do — often 
boldly;  but,  like  the  old  epic  heroes,  we  will  do 
it  because  it  needs  to  be  done. 

We  can  get  together  a  series  of  stories  from 
the  Arthur  romance  that  will  touch  but  lightly  the 
exaggerated,  false  devotion  to  ladies;  that  will 
leave  out  of  sight  the  guilty  passion  which  lies  at 
the  center  of  Malory's  poem  and  of  most  of  the 
other  literary  versions ;  that  will  put  into  a  minor 
place  the  mystical  religious  element  that  lingers 
about  the  Holy  Grail  side  of  the  romance;  that 


Hero-Tales  and  Romances  149 

will  make  little  of  the  symbolism,  ignore  the  dil- 
ettante and  merely  amateur  adventure,  handling 
the  heroic  rather  than  the  romantic  deeds — that 
will  do  all  these  things  and  still  be  a  romance  of 
King  Arthur.  He  who  would  make  such  a  version 
must  choose  out  from  Malory  or  The  Mabino- 
.gion,  material  that  belongs  in  such  a  series.  Or 
he  may  find  his  material  more  sifted  for  him  in 
Lanier's  The  Boy's  King  Arthur,  and  Knightly 
Legends  of  Wales.  Let  him  make  much  of 
Arthur,  simple  of  nature,  guileless  and  strong, 
looking  to  conquest  and  the  good  of  his  people 
rather  than  to  his  own  "worship"  or  to  his  own 
love-affairs ;  let  him  by  no  means  neglect  Merlin, 
the  most  permanently  interesting  figure;  he  is 
Odysseus  among  the  Greeks,  the  sacred  bard 
among  the  warriors,  Tusitala  in  Samoa,  the  subtle 
one,  always  so  appealing  and  so  satisfying  to  a 
child's  imagination — the  embodiment  of  that  intel- 
lectual dominance  which,  be  it  wisdom  or  magic, 
always  stands  beside  epic  achievement  in  the 
child's  estimation.  And  having  got  it  together, 
he  may  reassure  himself,  as  regards  his  epos  of 
King  Arthur,  that  there  is  no  one  Arthur;  that 
the  whole  legend  is  a  mine  out  of  which  every 
student  may  draw  a  treasure;  or,  to  change  the 
figure,  a  great,  beautiful  field  in  which  many  peo- 


150     Literature  in  the  Elementary  School 

pie  may  gather  grain  according  to  their  need  and 
their  taste. 

Much  later  when,  as  growing  youth,  they  are 
waking  up  to  certain  mature  social  problems,  the 
children  will  be  ready  for  the  style  and  matter  of 
Tennyson's  Idylls.  But  they  will  not  get  the 
characteristic  value  of  the  legend  till,  as  mature 
and  experienced  readers  of  books  and  livers  of 
life,  they  come  back  to  Malory  and  Chretien  de 
Troyes. 

Many  wise  teachers  will  dissent  wholly  from 
this  view  of  the  Arthur  stories,  and  in  many 
schools  they  are  presented  in  some  form  in  the 
fourth  or  fifth  grade,  and  read  in  the  Idylls  of  the 
King  in  the  seventh  and  eighth.  Suggestions  for 
literature  to  accompany  them  will  be  found  in  a 
later  chapter. 

Anybody  who  has  read  thus  far  can  easily 
foretell  what  will  be  said  about  the  Siegfried 
legend.  In  the  huge  accummulation  of  sagas, 
romances,  and  operas  that  now  go  to  make  up 
the  legend,  there  are  all  sorts  of  material — much 
of  it  totally  unsuited  for  children.  So  far  as  I 
have  been  able  to  find,  there  has  not  yet  been  made 
— certainly  not  in  English — a  collection  of  the 
stories  good  in  itself  and  good  for  children.  The 
teacher  must  do  his  own  sifting  and  arranging,  if 
it  seems  well  to  study  the  Siegfried  stories  within 


Hero-Tales  and  Romances  151 

the  grades.  The  collection  of  the  stories  that 
makes  up  the  Niebelungen  Lied  is  particularly 
poor  in  fitting  material,  being  sordid  and  coarse  in 
the  domestic  parts,  and  tediously  bloody  in  the 
heroic  parts.  Among  the  mass  of  stories  given  by 
Morris  and  Magnussen  in  the  Volsunga  Saga, 
and  in  Morris'  Sigurd  the  Volsung,  one  may  find 
material  for  making  his  own  epos  of  Siegfried, 
simple,  heroic,  triumphant — the  Siegfried  who 
killed  Fafnir,  escaped  the  snares  of  Regin,  got 
the  Nibelung  treasure,  rode  through  the  magic 
fire  and  freed  Brunhild.  You  may  be  sure  some 
old  saga-singer  closed  the  story  here,  and  so  may 
we.  This  leaves  for  a  much  later  day  in  the 
child's  life  the  tragic  Siegfried,  whos*  domestic 
experience,  with  its  sordid  motives,  its  bitter  quar- 
rels and  ugly  subterfuges,  is  surely  not  beautiful 
or  fitting  for  the  children ;  and  whose  treacherous 
taking-off  is  followed  by  a  vengeance  too  grim 
and  too  merely  fatalistic  to  be  planted  in  a  child's 
consciousness. 

As  we  find  a  sort  of  canon  of  fairy-tales,  so  we 
find  a  somewhat  accredited  list  of  hero-tales,  and 
the  five  we  have  discussed  comprise  it.  Occasion- 
ally a  teacher  may  enrich  his  material  by  an  epi- 
sode from  The  Cid,  from  the  Song  of  Roland, 
from  the  heroic  sagas  of  Iceland,  from  some  other 
mediaeval  romance;  but  they  will  not  detain  him 


152     Literature  in  the  Elementary  School 

long,  nor  will  any  one  of  them  constitute  a  really 
good  center  for  a  prolonged  study. 

In  the  later  years  of  this  period  certain  classes 
and  certain  schools  may  find  it  well  to  read  some 
of  the  literary  stories  of  adventure,  such  as  Ivan- 
hoe,  or  Treasure  Island,  or  The  Last  of  the 
Mohicans.  In  the  really  great  stories  of  adven- 
ture we  find  many  of  the  things  we  know  to  be 
good  for  the  children — the  "large  room,"  the  open 
atmosphere,  forest,  sea,  prairie,  all  the  most  dis- 
astrous chances  of  war  and  of  travel,  noble 
deeds  and  generous  character.  Every  parent  and 
teacher  recognizes  the  danger  which  lies  in  the 
child's  having  too  much  even  of  good  story  of 
adventure.  And  this  sort  of  story  is  the  peculiar 
field  of  the  cheap  story-teller,  in  whose  work  the 
weaknesses  and  dangers  of  the  species  especially 
abound.  Since  the  "out-put"  of  such  stories  is 
enormous,  and  since  the  children's  access  to  them, 
m  communities  where  they  can  buy  books,  or 
have  the  use  of  a  public  library,  is  practically 
unlimited,  all  teachers  and  parents  should  know 
the  marks  of  the  undesirable  story  of  adventure, 
and  be  able  to  guard  against  it.  The  weakness 
and  dangers  of  such  a  story  are  these : 

i.  The    details    are    exaggerated    until    the 
event  is  too  striking  and  too  highly  flavored,  so 


Hero-Tales  and  Romances  153 

as  to  corrupt  the  taste  and  create  an  appetite  that 
continues  to  demand  gross  satisfaction. 

2.  There  are  likely  to  be  too  many  sensations. 
The  inartistic  story  of  adventure  does  not  work 
up  its  incidents  with  an  accumulation  of  details 
and  an  effect  of  the  passage  of  time  that  gives  it 
verisimilitude,  but  rushes  forward  with  a  crude 
and  ill-digested  happening  on  every  five  pages.    It 
is  hard  to  believe  that  any  artistic  impression  is 
made  upon  children  whose  minds  are  excited  and 
jaded  by  such  books.     They  are  a  mere  indul- 
gence. 

3.  In  all  but  the  best  adventure  the  strain  of 
suspense  and  surprise  is  more  than  the  children 
should  be  asked  to  endure.    Too  many  experiences 
of   long   tension   and   final   hair-breadth  escape 
weaken  a  child's  credence  and  harden  his  emo- 
tions so  as  to  ruin  his  power  of  responding  to  such 
appeals.     The  devices  of  suspense  and  surprise 
are  employed,  to  be  sure,  by  the  masters,  but  gen- 
erally in  due  amount;  while  they  are  invariably 
overworked  by  the  cheap  writer  of  adventure. 

4.  The  facts  of  life  and  history  are  distorted 
and  discolored.    This  is  the  condemnation  of  such 
books  as  the  Henty  books.    They  profess  to  attach 
themselves  to  historical  events  or  periods,  while 
as  a  matter  of  fact,  they  have  nothing  of  the  event 
or  the  period  in  them,  except  a  few  names  and 


154     Literature  in  the  Elementary  School 

reflections  of  the  most  obvious  aspects  of  the  mere 
surface  facts.  As  reflection  of  a  period,  or  as 
illumination  of  an  event  in  it,  they  are  worse  than 
useless — they  are  absurdly  misleading.  Only  a 
genius,  or  a  student  who  has  immersed  himself  in 
the  matter,  can  produce  a  story  whose  psychology, 
sociology,  and  archaeology  will  throw  real  light 
upon  a  bygone  age  or  event.  There  are  such 
stories,  but  they  are  not  for  elementary  children  ; 
or,  if  they  are,  only  as  adventure,  not  as  history. 
No  one  who  chooses  books  for  children  should  be 
misled  by  these  cheap  manufactured  stories  which 
claim  as  their  reason  for  being  that  they  have  a 
historical  background.  After  all,  it  is  Scott  who 
has  given  us  the  best  big  stories  of  adventure. 
Ivanhoe,  Quentin  Durward,  Anne  of  Geierstein, 
Guy  Mannering,  with  the  proper  condensations 
and  adaptations,  are  of  the  best.  Cooper,  in  cer- 
tain of  the  Leatherstocking  novels,  creates  the 
atmosphere  of  really  great  adventure.  Steven- 
son knew  the  art  of  writing  a  "rattling  good 
story,"  which  yet  keeps  that  balance  of  judgment 
and  sense  of  proportion,  that  faithfulness  to  the 
truth  (not  the  fact)  of  experience,  which  prevent 
its  ever  degenerating  into  sensationalism.  Quiller- 
Couch  and  Joseph  Conrad  are  two  more  modern 
writers  who  have  achieved  in  many  cases  the  level 
of  great  stories  of  adventure. 


Hero-Tales  and  Romances  155 

It  is  not  probable  that  children  who  are  given 
the  older  epics  and  romances  in  school  will  have 
time  for  these  more  modern  romances  of  adven- 
ture in  the  class.  But  whoever  guides  their  out- 
of-school  reading,  be  it  parent  or  teacher,  should 
have  in  mind  these  few  simple  grounds  of  choice. 


CHAPTER  IX 

REALISTIC  STORIES 

In  the  material  we  use  for  children,  while  it 
is  not  profitable  to  draw  any  close  distinctions 
between  romantic  and  realistic  stories,  we  can 
not  fail  to  distinguish  in  general  between  the 
hero-tale  or  the  folk  Mdrchen,  where  we  must 
expect  preternatural  powers  and  marvelous 
events,  and  the  story  which  purports  to  deal 
with  real  people,  and  with  experiences  which, 
however  rare,  are  still  possible  or  probable. 
And  these  stories  of  real  people  and  actual 
experiences  have  their  value  for  the  children — 
their  own  value,  first  of  all,  as  making  a  distinct 
contribution  to  the  child's  education,  and  another 
value  as  tending  to  counteract  and  balance  the 
effects  of  the  thoroughgoing  romances.  No  one 
questions  the  fact  that  there  are  ill  effects  from 
too  much  romance  and  too  many  marvels.  A 
child's  vision  of  the  world  does  become  dis- 
torted if  it  is  too  often  or  too  long  organized 
upon  a  plan  dominated  by  the  wonderful  or  the 
fantastic;  his  sense  of  fact  dulled,  if  his  imagi- 
nation is  called  upon  to  appreciate  and  to  pro- 
duce prevailingly  the  unusual  combinations;  his 
156 


Realistic  Stories  157 

taste  vitiated,  if  he  is  supplied  too  abundantly  with 
those  striking  and  super-emotional  incidents 
which  fill  the  romances.  All  these  dangers  are 
counteracted  in  part  by  the  child's  fact-studies, 
and  by  his  experiences  in  actual  life.  But  this 
is  not  sufficient;  it  is  artistically  due  him  that 
the  antidote  should  have  the  same  kind  of  charm 
as  the  original  poison.  It  is  well,  too,  to  bear  in 
mind  that  even  the  small  children  should  be 
appealed  to  on  several  sides,  and  that  their  taste 
should  be  made  as  catholic  as  possible.  One  is 
sorry  to  find  a  child  of  eight  or  ten  who  likes 
only  fairy-tales,  or  war-stories,  or  detective 
stories ;  he  should  like  all  stories. 

But  we  are  more  interested,  naturally,  in  the 
positive  services  performed  by  the  stories  of  real 
life;  or  to  be  more  explicit,  those  stories  told  with 
the  effect  of  actuality,  and  with  the  atmosphere  of 
verisimilitude.  Of  course,  we  should  require  of 
these  stories  good  form  and  good  writing,  so  that 
we  may  expect  from  them  on  that  side  what 
we  expect  from  any  good  literature.  In  addition, 
we  may  expect  them  to  perform  for  the  children 
and  for  all  of  us  certain  distinctive  artistic  ser- 
vices. First,  they  operate  to  throw  back  upon 
actual  life  the  glow  of  art.  Those  stories  which 
use  people  and  circumstances  that  we  can  match 
in  our  own  actual  surroundings  and  experiences 


158     Literature  in  the  Elementary  School 

impress  upon  us  most  vividly  the  fact,  so  im- 
portant for  our  real  culture  both  in  art  and  in 
life,  that  literature  is  in  a  very  real  sense  a  pres- 
entation of  life;  that  these  charming  people  and 
things  are  but  images  taken  up  from  the  real 
world,  chosen  and  raised  to  this  level,  by  which 
very  process  they  are  invested  with  a  halo  of 
beauty  and  distinction.  This  nimbus  of  art  casts 
back  upon  life  some  of  its  own  radiance,  digni- 
fying and  enriching  it,  and  to  many  minds 
revealing  for  the  first  time  beauty  and  meaning 
which  they  would  otherwise  never  have  seen;  so 
that  we  truly  see  and  rightly  interpret  many  of 
the  people  and  things  in  our  own  lives  only  after 
we  have  seen  the  mates  of  them  in  a  story  or  a 
poem.  A  group  of  children  who  had  been  helped 
to  make  a  verse  about  rosy  radishes,  and  had 
then  done  a  water-color  picture  of  a  plate  of  the 
same  vegetable,  found  for  many  days  new  and 
artistic  joy  in  a  grocer's  window.  The  same 
children,  having  learned  Lowell's  phrase  of  the 
dandelion's  "dusty  gold,"  were  not  satisfied  till 
they  had  made  a  beautiful  phrase  to  render  the 
burnished  gold  of  the  butter-cups.  The  same 
class  on  a  picnic  labored  with  ardor  to  make 
a  beautiful  verse  about  Uneeda  biscuits  and 
ginger-ale,  to  match  the  Persian's  "A  Jug  of 
Wine,  a  Loaf  of  Bread."  They  were  much  baffled 


Realistic  Stories  159 

when  they  finally  concluded  that  it  would  not  go 
— that  these  modern  and  specific  articles  refused 
to  wear  a  halo. 

The  obverse  and  counterpart  of  this  glow 
caught  by  the  actual  world  from  art  is  the  vital 
interest  that  surrounds  a  person,  or  an  object, 
or  a  sentiment  which  we  come  upon  in  a  poem 
or  a  story,  and  which  we  recognize  as  correspond- 
ing to  something  in  our  own  experience — a  recog- 
nition all  the  more  satisfying  if  the  correspond- 
ence be  that  of  actual  identity.  Every  teacher 
of  younger  children  recalls  at  once  the  tingling 
interest  they  feel  in  practically  every  story  they 
are  told,  as  some  incident  or  detail  parallels  or 
suggests  something  they  have  known — "My 
father  has  seen  a  bear ;"  "Once  I  found  an  eagle's 
feather;"  "There  are  daffodils  in  my  grand- 
mother's garden."  A  little  girl  of  ten  had  been 
given  a  very  simple  arrangement  of  a  melody 
from  Beethoven's  Fifth  Symphony  to  play  on 
the  piano.  Soon  after  she  had  learned  it,  she 
was  taken  to  hear  the  symphony.  When  her 
melody  came  dropping  in  from  the  flutes  and 
violins — birds  and  brooks  and  whispering  leaves 
— she  threw  up  at  her  friend  a  flash  of  radiant 
surprise  and  delight.  Her  whole  soul  stirred  to 
see  here — in  this  stately  place,  with  the  great 
orchestra,  in  the  noble  assemblage  of  glorious 


160    Literature  in  the  Elementary  School 

concords — her  friend,  her  little  song.  For  days 
she  played  it  over  many  times  every  day,  with 
the  greatest  tenderness  of  expression. 

The  wise  teacher  sees  in  this  eager  recogni- 
tion and  identification  one  of  the  most  desirable 
results  of  literary  experience,  and  utilizes  it  as 
the  most  precious  of  educational  opportunities, 
since  this  mood  of  delighted  recognition  is  with 
the  younger  children  also  the  mood  of  creation, 
and  with  the  older  children  the  most  useful  and 
practical  clue  to  the  finding  of  their  own  literary 
material. 

It  is  in  this  kind  of  story — those  that  reflect 
the  events  of  actual  life  and  are  concerned  with 
ordinary  people — that  we  are  able  to  introduce 
our  children  in  art  to  their  contemporaries  and 
coevals.  It  means  much  for  a  child's  conscious- 
ness that  he  should  develop  a  quick  and  dramatic 
sympathy  with  lives  other  than  his  own,  and 
yet  like  his  own — with  the  experiences  and 
characters  of  other  children,  other  folks'  ways  of 
living.  This  sympathy  is  among  the  literary 
products,  since  it  is  best  developed  and  fostered  by 
literature;  this  because  it  is  literature  only,  that 
handles  its  material  in  that  concrete  and  emo- 
tional way  which  produces  the  impression  of 
actual  reality  and  serves  as  a  substitute  for  it. 


Realistic  Stories  161 

Teach  the  little  children  Stevenson's 
Little  Indian,  Sioux  or  Crow, 
Little    frosty   Eskimo, 
Little  Turk  or  Japanee, 

and  teach  it  with  the  natural  implications  that 
will  occur  to  any  teacher  of  expedients,  and  you 
will  have  taught  them  a  certain  attitude  of  con- 
fidential understanding  toward  their  brown 
brothers  (in  spite  of  the  decidedly  chauvinistic 
character  of  this  masterpiece)  that  they  would 
not  have  got  out  of  a  year  of  social  history. 

The  difficulties  of  choosing  stories  of  modern 
child-life  for  teaching  in  school  are  serious. 
They  are  most  likely  to  be  thin  in  material, 
flimsy  in  structure,  trivial  in  style,  sentimental  in 
atmosphere,  so  that  they  fall  to  pieces  under  the 
test  of  study  in  a  class  of  acute  and  questioning 
children.  It  is  best  not  to  choose  any  long  book 
of  this  sort  For  the  younger  children  use  the 
shorter  bits  of  story,  such  as  may  be  found  in 
Laura  Richards'  Five  Minute  Stories,  or  such  as 
any  teacher  may  collect  for  herself  from  many 
sources;  occasionally  one  may  find  a  perfect 
specimen  in  one  of  the  children's  periodicals,  and 
there  is  now  a  wealth  of  such  things  in  verse. 
We  must  be  wary  of  those  books  about  children, 
interpretative  of  children,  of  which  our  own  day 
has  produced  so  many  charming  specimens, 


1 62     Literature  in  the  Elementary  School 

whose  appeal  is  entirely  to  adults.  Such  are 
Pater's  The  Child  in  the  House,  and  Kenneth 
Graham's  The  Golden  Age.  Part  of  A  Child's 
Garden  of  Verses  is  of  this  kind.  Of  this  sort,  too, 
is  the  pretty  little  Emmy  Lou,  an  interpretation 
of  a  child's  consciousness,  not  a  children's  story. 

The  general  question  of  the  reading  of  juve- 
niles will  be  left  for  a  chapter  of  miscellanies 
farther  on.  It  is  not  possible  to  make  any  long 
book  about  children  the  center  of  a  class's  work. 
Such  material  is  best  used  as  a  sort  of  reserve,  a 
recreation  from  time  to  time,  and  is  best  given 
in  short  stories  that  can  be  read  at  intervals;  or 
if  it  be  a  long  story,  one  that  can  be  distributed 
among  the  other  reading.  It  is  true  of  this  kind 
of  story  too,  that  the  best  results  come  of  using 
material  not  made  especially  for  children,  but 
which  appeals  to  children,  however,  because  it 
appeals  to  universal  and  elemental  human  nature. 

Among  the  folk-tales  are  many  of  the  real- 
istic type  that  are  most  serviceable.  Like  the 
folk  fairy-tales  they  have  that  mysteriously  but 
truly  universal  appeal,  which  makes  them  child- 
like, though  originally  they  were  not  made  for 
children.  They  are  those  comic  and  realistic 
tales  which  may  originally  have  been  coarse,  but 
which  have  been  refined  by  years  and  winnowed 
by  use  until  they  have  taken  on  a  form  and  value 


Realistic  Stories  163 

like  those  of  some  piece  of  ancient  peasant  hand- 
work— they  are  simple,  genuine,  homely  art. 
Such  are  Kluge  Else,  Hans  in  Luck,  Great 
Claus  and  Little  Claus,  The  Three  Sillies  and  all 
the  delightful  company  of  noodles,  and  the  great 
family  of  plain  folks  with  their  homely  affairs. 

Of  course,  the  great  classic  of  the  realistic 
method  suited  for  children  is  Robinson  Crusoe. 
From  the  days  of  Rousseau  who  designated  it  as 
the  one  book  to  be  given  to  his  ideally  educated 
child,  teachers  have  appreciated  its  value.  In- 
deed, a  very  curious,  but  not  unnatural,  thing 
has  happened,  in  the  fact  that  this  book  has 
been  so  long  and  closely  associated  with  chil- 
dren that  it  has  come  to  be  considered  a  sort 
of  nursery  classic,  a  wonder-tale  composed  for 
infants,  by  hosts  of  people  who  have  no  idea 
that  it  is  in  reality  a  masterly  realistic  novel  and  a 
profoundly  philosophical  culture-document — an 
epoch-making  piece  of  art  Fortunately,  it  is  easy 
to  prepare  it  for  the  children;  it  is  largely  a 
matter  of  leaving  out  the  reflective  passages,  and 
of  translating  into  modern  English  the  very  few 
phrases  and  turns  of  expression  now  obsolete. 
One  would  deplore  the  reduction  of  the  story  for 
any  purpose  to  mere  babble — to  words  of  one 
syllable,  or  any  other  form  that  destroys  the 
flavor  of  Defoe's  convincing  style.  It  is  easy 


164    Literature  in  the  Elementary  School 

to  arrange  the  experiences  so  that  the  story  serves 
the  purposes  of  a  cycle — a  single  experience  con- 
stituting a  portion  which  may  be  treated  as  a 
complete  thing;  for  example,  the  making  of  the 
baskets,  the  construction  of  the  pots,  the  saving 
of  the  seed. 

Robinson  Crusoe  is  a  treasure  to  many  a  grade 
teacher,  because  it  really  "correlates"  beautifully 
with  work  that  the  children  are  doing,  or  might 
well  be  doing,  in  the  third  and  fourth  grades; 
whether  in  their  history  study,  where  they  are 
devising  food  and  shelter,  or  have  advanced  to 
the  study  of  trades  and  crafts;  or,  under  an 
entirely  different  scheme,  have  started  on  the 
study  of  voyagers  and  colonists.  The  art  and  the 
charm  of  Robinson  Crusoe,  and  the  secret  of 
its  literary  value  for  the  child,  lie  in  the  power 
of  the  sheer  realism — a  realism  not  so  much  of 
material  as  of  method — to  hold  and  convince  us. 
A  part  of  this  realism  is  the  richness  and  homeli- 
ness of  detail;  the  painstaking  record  of  failures 
and  tentative  achievements;  the  calm,  judicial 
view  of  experiments;  the  colorless  flow  of  long 
periods  of  time ;  the  homely,  and  as  it  were  domes- 
tic, worth  of  Crusoe's  successes.  Oh,  it  is  a  great 
and  convincing  book!  How  great  and  how  con- 
vincing one  may  realize  when  he  reads  the  only 
one  of  the  innumerable  "Robinsons,"  taking  their 


Realistic  Stories  165 

inspiration  from  Defoe's  book,  that  really  sur- 
vives— the  Swiss  Family  Rjbinson,  with  its 
facile  and  too  often  fatuous  case  of  accomplish- 
ment, its  total  lack  of  reality,  its  stupid  and  blun- 
dering didacticism,  its  impossible  jumble  of  detail, 
its  commonplace  romance;  yet,  we  must  reluc- 
tantly add,  its  unfailing  charm  for  the  children. 
That  a  book  with  all  these  faults  keeps  its  hold 
upon  the  successive  generations  of  children  is 
testimony  to  the  fact  that  its  basis  of  interest, 
whidb  is  also  for  children  the  essential  interest  of 
Robinson  Crusoe — the  old  foundation  process  of 
getting  fire  and  roof  and  coat  and  bread — is  the 
romance  that  is  forever  fresh  and  thrilling. 

The  exceedingly  thoroughgoing  realism  of  the 
method  (notice,  not  the  large  frame-work,  which 
is  sufficiently  romantic)  of  Robinson  Crusoe 
would  suggest  at  once  that  it  might  profitably  be 
accompanied  by  some  bits  of  literature  that  would 
throw  a  more  romantic  and  idealistic  coloring 
upon  the  primitive  craftsman  and  his  craft,  and 
upon  the  experiences  of  voyager  and  colonist. 
Such  would  be  Bret  Harte's  Columbus,  Mrs. 
Hemans'  The  Landing  of  the  Pilgrim  Fathers, 
Marvell's  Bermudas  (with  a  few  difficult  lines 
omitted).  Longfellow's  Jasper  Becerra,  the 
twenty-third  Psalm,  and  several  chapters  from 
Treasure  Island.  Every  teacher  could  add  other 
titles. 


1 66     Literature  in  the  Elementary  School 

The  older  children — those  of  the  seventh  and 
eighth  grades — may  profitably  read  in  school,  for 
the  sake  of  the  intellectual  experience,  a  classic 
detective  story  or  a  story  whose  plot  and  evolu- 
tion present  an  almost  purely  intellectual  prob- 
lem. It  is  true  that  the  air  of  intellectual  acumen 
that  pervades  most  of  these  stories  is  specious, 
and  that  they  are  in  reality,  and  as  a  rule,  shallow 
and  unlogical  pieces  of  reasoning.  But  it  takes  an 
older  and  more  expert  person  to  see  this  for  him- 
self. The  teacher  should  try  to  qualify  his  chil- 
dren for  judging  a  good  story  of  this  kind,  and 
save  them,  if  possible,  from  the  detective-story 
habit,  which  wastes  much  good  time  and  fills  a 
child's  mind  with  very  cheap  problems.  But  if  he 
choose  a  good  story  of  this  kind  for  reading  with 
his  class,  he  may  help  to  set  their  minds  going  in 
that  region  where  the  imagination  must  ally  itself 
with  logic  and  with  a  reasoned  and  inevitable 
progress  of  events.  Properly  channeled,  this  is 
a  most  valuable  experience,  both  from  the  purely 
mental  and  from  the  literary  points  of  view. 
After  all,  the  best  detective  story  in  English  is 
Poe's  The  Gold  Bug.  There  is,  of  course,  that 
element  in  Treasure  Island,  but,  being  there  so 
interwoven  with  the  romantic  and  adventurous 
details  of  that  delectable  tale,  it  is  not  likely  to 
yield  for  the  children  that  peculiar  bit  of  training 


Realistic  Stones  167 

which  they  might  get  from  the  more  unmixed 
intellectuality  and  more  obvious  realism  of  The 
Gold  Bug. 

It  is  difficult  to  know  what  to  say,  and  where 
to  say  it,  concerning  Don  Quixote.  That  trium- 
phant book  is  assuredly  a  masterpiece  of  the 
realistic  method.  It  came  as  an  antidote  and 
tonic,  helping  to  restore  health  and  sanity  to  a 
romance-sick  world,  and  it  ought  to  have  a  place 
in  the  discipline  of  certain  kinds  of  young  people. 
But  it  cannot  be  said  that  this  place  is  always  with- 
in the  elementary  period,  unless  a  certain  grade  or 
certain  children  have  had  a  peculiar  experience 
and  can  be  said  to  need  it.  If  the  grade  has  had 
the  King  Arthur  stories  of  Malory  or  Tennyson 
in  large  amounts  with  a  very  earnest  teacher, 
they  can  very  certainly  be  said  to  need  Don 
Quixote — always,  of  course,  shortened  and  ex- 
purgated, and  in  carefully  chosen  episodes;  from 
which  process — such  is  its  essential  greatness,  and 
such  the  character  of  its  unity — it  suffers  less 
than  any  other  story  in  the  world.  We  should 
be  quite  aware  of  the  danger  of  giving  the  chil- 
dren any  large  amount  of  this  peculiar  kind  of 
realism — that  which  constitutes  itself  a  satire  and 
a  sort  of  parody  on  some  over-serious  bit  of 
romance.  Nothing  is  more  deadening  and  more 
commonplace  than  this  peculiar  form  of  wit, 


1 68     Literature  in  the  Elementary  School 

when  it  becomes  a  habit  or  offers  itself  in  a  mass. 
But  the  peculiar  vitality  and  richness  of  Don 
Quixote  lifts  it  far  above  the  level  of  parody, 
constituting  it  a  magnificent  original  piece  of  art 
in  itself.  However,  the  whole  question  must  be 
left  open.  It  may  be  that  not  until  he  is  far 
along  in  the  secondary  school  or  in  college  is  the 
scholar  suffering  for  Don  Quixote,  or  capable  of 
appreciating  it. 

Among  the  older  children  the  note  of  realism 
and  wit  may  be  sounded  in  a  wisely  chosen  essay. 
Of  course,  they  are  not  ready  for  the  indirect 
and  allusive  manner,  nor  for  the  lyric  egoism,  of 
the  pure  literary  essay.  But  there  are  essays  of 
Lamb's,  a  very  few  of  Steele's,  some  of  Sidney 
Smith's,  some  of  the  more  literary  of  Burroughs' 
nature-studies,  bits  of  Oliver  Wendell  Holmes 
and  Charles  Dudley  Warner,  that  are  ideal  for 
them. 

Shall  we  sum  up  by  saying  that,  on  the  whole, 
we  find  the  romantic  and  fanciful  stories  best 
suited  in  form  and  spirit  to  the  elementary  chil- 
dren; since  realistic  stories  that  are  really  good 
art,  are,  as  a  rule,  too  mature  and  too  difficult  for 
the  children,  and  realistic  stories  of  the  juvenile 
type  are  not  good  enough  either  in  form  or  in 
content  to  justify  long  class  study?  However, 
certain  distinctive  and  desirable  results  may  be 


Realistic  Stories  169 

expected  from  specimens  interwoven  here  and 
there  of  that  kind  of  story  which  represents  real 
life,  which  uses  events  both  possible  and  prob- 
able, and  which  handles  its  material  by  the  method 
of  realistic  detail.  In  the  earliest  years  these  may 
be  secured  by  the  reading  of  well-chosen  little 
stories  of  modern  children — indeed,  of  any 
modern  material,  provided  it  be  simple  enough — 
and  by  the  teaching  of  verses  which  reflect  aspects 
of  actual  life — human  life  or  nature.  In  the 
third  or  fourth  grade  Robinson  Crusoe  forms  a 
desirable  basis  for  the  year's  work.  It  should 
always  be  accompanied  by  shorter  bits  of  a  more 
romantic  and  heroic  type.  Later  in  the  elemen- 
tary period — say  in  the  sixth  or  seventh  grade — 
the  reasonable  and  practical  element  may  be  intro- 
duced in  the  form  of  a  story  of  the  detective  kind 
— a  story  whose  plot  presents  an  intellectual 
problem,  whose  atmosphere  and  method  make  the 
impression  of  actual  fact.  And  in  the  seventh  and 
eighth  grade  these  same  purposes — that  of  ex- 
hibiting to  the  children  actual  human  life  as  art 
sees  it,  that  of  bringing  them  into  educational 
contact  with  the  realistic  method,  that  of  counter- 
acting any  possible  mental  danger  from  too  much 
romance  and  adventure — may  be  served  by  essays 
chosen  on  principles  already  many  times  sug- 
gested. 


CHAPTER  X 

NATURE    AND    ANIMAL    STORIES 

In  a  discussion  of  these  stories  we  should  again 
take  to  ourselves  the  warning  that  we  must  guard 
constantly  and  carefully  against  too  narrow  a 
view  of  literature.  The  reckless  lack  of  knowl- 
edge and  experience  that  sweeps  into  the  cate- 
gory of  literature  everything  expressed  in  words 
is  so  irritating  to  a  careful  student  that  he  is 
always  in  danger  of  allowing  his  irritation  to  help 
carry  him  to  the  other  extreme — that  of  an 
uncatholic  exclusiveness.  We  must,  however,  be 
aware  of  the  fact  that  other  kinds  of  writing, 
entirely  technical  and  special  in  their  simpler 
varieties,  are  constantly  approaching  the  borders 
of  literature,  as  they  become  more  and  more 
humanized,  draw  about  them  more  and  more 
of  emotional  association,  and  take  on  more  of 
the  graces  of  the  arts  of  writing.  We  must  be 
aware  of  this,  and  we  must  be,  as  it  were,  con- 
stantly on  the  lookout  for  a  possible  new  arrival 
among  the  kinds  of  literature,  and  be  prepared  to 
give  it  hospitality;  and  we  must  acknowledge 
that  some  of  the  results  which  we  desire  to 
accomplish  through  genuine  literature  are  accom- 
17* 


Nature  and  Animal  Stories  171 

plished  through  those  things  that  have  only  some 
of  the  characteristics  of  literature.  But  still,  for 
the  sake  of  the  good  pedagogical  and  critical  con- 
science, and  for  the  sake  of  keeping  the  funda- 
mental distinctions  as  clear  as  possible,  the  teacher 
needs  to  know  precisely  what  he  is  doing  when 
he  is  using  this  material.  He  must  decide,  in  the 
very  earliest  years  of  a  child's  education,  whether 
he  is  teaching  facts  and  theories,  or  presenting  art, 
in  his  story. 

The  custom  of  using  animals  and  plants  to 
represent  human  beings  and  to  express  human 
meanings  is  as  old  as  folk-art  itself.  Quite  as 
old,  too,  is  the  revelation  that  the  creatures  have 
individualities  and  personalities  of  their  own  to 
be  dramatically  and  sympathetically  set  forth  in 
terms  of  human  psychology,  in  default  of  a  truer 
one.  The  mind  of  man  goeth  not  back  to  the 
time  when  the  fox,  the  cock,  and  the  ass — Rey- 
nard, Chanticleer,  and  Brunei — the  rabbit,  the 
eagle,  the  oak,  and  the  vine,  were  not  well-defined 
characters,  well  provided  with  affairs.  But  this 
early  folk  treatment  of  the  creatures  was  dis- 
tinctly art,  occasionally  morals,  but  not  science. 
It  did  not  aim  to  teach  the  facts  as  to  the  struc- 
ture and  habits  of  the  creatures  as  life-forms.  It 
interpreted  human  life  through  them  or  them 
by  means  of  human  terms. 


172     Literature  in  the  Elementary  School 

Precisely  here  we  must  begin  our  discrimina- 
tion between  real  literature  and  "nature-stories;" 
The  longing  to  pass  down  to  the  infant  mind  the 
results  of  scientific  discovery  has  produced  in  our 
generation  (perhaps  it  was  really  produced  in  the 
generation  preceding  ours)  an  enormous  crop  of 
most  anomalous  growths  in  this  field  of  nature- 
stories.  A  favorite  method  of  teaching  a  child  the 
facts  about  any  object  or  process  in  nature 
has  been  to  translate  it  into  a  story  of  human 
affairs,  or  draw  it  'up  as  a  picture  of  a  human 
situation,  involving  naturally  and  inevitably,  a 
multitude  of  extraneous  or  misleading  details. 
For  example,  we  would  teach  a  child  about  the 
distribution  of  the  dandelion  plant.  So  we  con- 
struct the  "Story  of  the  Dandelion  Seed."  Now, 
there  undoubtedly  is  a  story  of  the  dandelion 
seed.  Incident  follows  incident,  stage  follows 
stage,  from  bloom  to  bloom  again — every  step 
beautiful  and  interesting  in  itself,  and  to  be  com- 
pletely trusted  to  make  its  own  appeal,  just  dis- 
played for  itself.  But  some  people  doubt  this. 
They  have  lost,  or  have  never  acquired,  that  faith 
in  nature  and  her  processes  which  trusts  to  this 
appeal;  and  then  they  long — and  this  is  quite 
natural — to  enlist  in  aid  of  their  fact-studies  the 
charm  and  the  emotion  that  lie  in  literature.  So 
they  endow  the  Dandelion  Seed  with  a  papa  and 


Nature  and  Animal  Stories  173 

a  mama — a  jovial  suburbanite  of  a  papa,  and  a 
fussy,  sentimentalizing  mama — with  a  cradle, 
with  a  vocabulary,  with  a  system  of  morals  (there 
are  even  "naughty"  Dandelion  Seeds),  and  with 
many  feelings.  They  tell  about  his  "home,"  his 
infancy,  his  training,  his  departure,  his  settling 
in  a  new  home — all  the  while  with  the  intention 
of  teaching  their  infants  the  facts,  but  all  the 
while  covering  them  up  under  a  trivial  and  un- 
necessary myth.  In  the  end  the  product  is  scorned  , 
by  science  for  its  overlay  of  misleading  detail,  ( 
and  rejected  by  art  for  the  obnoxious  intrusion 
of  work-a-day  and  professional  fact.  Now,  let 
who  will  believe  that  such  stories  and  verses  are 
a  legitimate  way  of  conveying  or  of  illuminating 
scientific  fact;  but  let  him  not  suppose  that  they 
are  literature.  The  case  is  different  when  the 
teacher  of  fact  happens  to  find  in  art,  in  real 
literature,  some  picture  or  detail  with  which  to 
emotionalize  and  beautify  his  fact.  It  does  some- 
times happen  that  the  poem,  the  folk-tale,  the 
fable,  has  set  in  some  charming  human  light 
certain  aspects  of  the  object  which  the  children 
are  studying.  They  are  entitled  to  these  to  help 
them  to  see  their  object  or  event  in  the  round. 

It  is  true,  of  course,  that  no  piece  of  literature 
that  handles  for  its  purposes  natural  objects  can 
afford  to  be  flagrantly  inaccurate.  We  all  know 


174     Literature  in  the  Elementary  School 

how  neatly  John  Burroughs  punctured  Long- 
fellow's bit  of  pathos,  "There  are  no  birds  in  last 
year's  nests,"  by  proving  that  many  species  of 
birds  devote  themselves  to  securing  and  occupy- 
ing last  year's  nests.  But  in  the  main  it  is  truth 
rather  than  fact  that  literature  gives  us — truth, 
or  fact  colored  and  interpreted  by  personal  asso- 
ciation and  emotion;  we  must  not  ask  colorless 
fact  of  her,  and  it  is  the  most  unprofitable  quib- 
bling to  demand  of  her  scientific  exactness,  which 
is  always  prosaic.  On  the  other  hand,  there  is  no 
place  in  nature-study  for  the  imagination  of  in- 
vention, nor  for  any  of  those  striking  and  dra- 
matic effects  arranged  and  calculated,  secured  by 
manipulation  and  choice  of  material — effects 
which  are  the  very  native  method  of  literature. 

But  writing  about  animals  and  objects  in 
nature  may  become  literature  when,  losing  sight 
of  the  need  of  teaching  fact,  of  giving  profes- 
sional instruction,  it  presents  them  as  personali- 
ties, when  it  humanizes  them,  either  by  attributing 
to  them  human  qualities  and  feelings,  or  by  sur- 
rounding them  with  an  atmosphere  of  human 
emotion  and  experience;  it  may  become  good 
literature  when  it  does  these  things  well;  the 
chances  are  all  against  its  becoming  great  litera- 
ture at  all. 

If  the  nature-story  making    use    of    literary 


Nature  and  Animal  Stories  175 

devices,  but  designed  to  teach  scientific  fact,  is 
anomalous,  the  case  is  no  better,  artistically  or 
educationally,  when  the  story  of  an  animal  is 
made  the  propaganda  of  the  Humane  Society,  or 
of  the  anti-vivisectionists,  or  of  any  other  believ- 
ers,  no  matter  how  just  and  important  may  be 
their  belief  or  doctrine.  I  have  known  a  child 
whose  outlook  was  prejudiced,  and  whose  men- 
tal repose  most  seriously  disturbed,  by  an  over- 
earnest  and  over-colored  story  of  the  sufferings 
of  a  deserving  and  phenomenally  sensitive  cab- 
horse  ;  and  this  morbid  sense  of  suffering  was  the 
result  of  reading  a  book  whose  style  was  com- 
monplace, whose  structure  was  chaotic,  whose 
sentiment  was  melodramatic,  and  whose  psy- 
chology was  guesswork — which  did  not  yield,  in 
a  word,  a  single  one  of  the  desirable  fruits  of 
literature.  We  must  devise  some  way  to  preserve 
and  to  deepen  in  our  little  people  that  humorous, 
loving  sympathy  with  our  furry  and  hairy 
brothers,  more  wholesome  and  natural  than 
stories  of  suicidal  ponies,  revolutionary  stallions, 
persecuted  partridges,  and  heart-broken  mastiffs. 
Better  than  any  library  of  books  about  them  is  the 
friendship  of  one  dog  or  horse,  or  the  care  of 
any,  the  humblest,  pet.  And  at  least  we  may 
remind  ourselves  that  we  do  not  have  to  accom- 
plish the  awakening  of  that  or  any  other  sym- 


176     Literature  in  the  Elementary  School 

pathy  at  the  cost  of  teaching  as  literature  stories 
undesirable  and  inartistic. 

The  oldest  of  beast-tales  available  for  occiden- 
tal children  is  the  story  of  Reynard  the  Fox.  We 
all  know  how  there  grew  up  about  the  original 
core  of  the  story  a  vast  accretion  of  material, 
which  became  ever  more  and  more  satirical  and 
abstract,  until  finally  the  original  folk-cycle  was 
buried  under  it.  Of  course,  in  the  later  forms 
the  tales  are  most  unchildlike.  But  it  is  not  so 
difficult  to  extract  from  the  cycle  the  original 
simpler  one — or  at  least  to  get  together  a  cycle 
which  has  the  simplicity,  the  sincerity,  and  the 
objectivity  of  genuine  folk-art.  The  children 
love  the  tales,  and  get  so  much  out  of  them  that 
it  is  a  pity  for  any  child  to  miss  them  completely ; 
though  I  should  never  advise  that  many  of  the 
tales  be  read  to  them  continuously.  To  do  this 
would  be  to  immerse  them  in  an  atmosphere  of 
trickery.  It  is  better  to  keep  the  story  lying  by, 
and  to  read  them  an  episode  now  and  then  in  the 
intervals  of  something  more  serious.  Many  peo- 
ple will  question  the  moral  effect  of  stories  in 
which  the  rascal  uniformly  triumphs,  as  in  Rey- 
nard. But  I  have  observed,  among  the  children 
with  whom  I  have  read  it,  that  they  are  never  in 
sympathy  with  Reynard,  and  are  never  pleased 
with  his  triumphs.  This  is  in  striking,  and  in 


Nature  and  Animal  Stories  177 

some  respects  puzzling,  contrast  with  the  fact  that 
the  triumphs  and  successes  of  Bre'r  Rabbit  in 
Uncle  Remus  always  delight  the  children.  The 
tales  that  Joel  Chandler  Harris  has  assembled  in 
this  collection  constitute  a  most  charming  and 
usable  beast-epic.  The  universal  sympathy  with 
this  hero  may  be  encouraged  and  enjoyed  with- 
out misgiving,  because  Bre'r  Rabbit  succeeds  by 
subtlety,  where  Reynard  succeeds  by  knavery. 
Bre'r  Rabbit's  triumphs  are  those  of  sheer  intel- 
lect, as  truely  as  are  those  of  Odysseus,  while 
Reynard's  are  those  of  low  and  cruel  cunning. 
It  is  impossible  to  exaggerate  the  access  of  charm 
and  interest  that  invest  the  Uncle  Remus  stories 
because  of  Uncle  Remus  himself.  He  is  the 
genuine  folk  story-teller,  full  of  faith  and  sincer- 
ity, yet  steeped  in  humor,  and  gifted  with  the 
sense  of  essential  reality;  add  to  this  that  he  is  a 
gentle  soul,  a  devoted  lover  of  childhood,  with 
a  never-failing  sense  of  the  reverence  due  the 
child.  While  to  those  who  know  the  negro  dialect 
the  stories  lose  much  by  translation,  still  they  are 
good  enough  to  bear  even  this  test,  and  such 
translation  is  necessary  for  some  groups  of  chil- 
dren. Like  the  Reynard  tales,  those  of  Bre'r 
Rabbit  are  best  inserted  here  and  there  through- 
out the  year  and  not  read  in  a  mass. 

The  fables — all  those  oriental  and  classic  ones 


178    Literature  in  the  Elementary  School 

that  are  called  Aesop's,  as  well  as  many  of  La 
Fontaine's — are,  from  the  literary  point  of  view 
the  best  of  the  animal  stories.  Leave  quite  out 
of  view  their  moralistic  and  figurative  meanings, 
and  most  of  them  are  sympathetic  and  dramatic 
presentations  of  the  animals  themselves,  with 
those  wider  human  implications  that  make  an 
anecdote  about  an  animal  literature  rather  than 
science.  The  family  or  the  schoolroom  that  can 
possess  a  copy  of  Boutet  de  Monvel's  La  Fon- 
taine has  in  the  pictures  the  most  charming  and 
penetrating  criticism  and  interpretation  of  the 
fables  themselves,  of  the  animals  who  appear  in 
them,  and  of  the  motives  and  experiences  that 
lie  behind  them. 

Scattered  throughout  the  folk-tales  and  among 
the  fairy-stories  that  we  know  best  are  some 
fascinating  animal  stories.  The  folk-mind  is 
always  impressed  in  an  imaginative  way  with  the 
relation  between  man  and  the  animals — not  al- 
ways-a  loving  or  sympathetic  relation.  They  feel, 
what  the  modern  writing  humanitarian  seems  to 
have  determined  to  ignore,  that  deep,  psychic, 
inscrutable  animosity,  be  it  instinct  or  race- 
memory  or  whatever  it  may  be,  that  has  always 
existed  between  man  and  the  beasts ;  though  there 
are  among  practically  all  the  folk  whose  tales 
we  have  collected,  stories  of  "grateful  beasts," 


Nature  and  Animal  Stories  179 

of  friendly  and  serviceable  animals.  Then  there 
are  such  classics  as  The  Little  Red  Hen, 
Henny-Penny,  The  Three  Billy-Goats,  and  The 
Musicians  of  Bremen,  whose  perfection  of  art  as 
stories  and  as  presentations  of  life  is  beyond 
criticism. 

The  native  stories  of  many  of  the  North 
American  Indian  tribes  have  a  charming  way  of 
presenting  the  animals.  Unfortunately,  most  of 
our  Indian  folk-lore  was  collected  and  reduced 
to  literary  form  in  what  one  may  call  the  blaue 
Blume  period  of  folk-lore  collecting,  and  is  spoiled 
everywhere  by  the  oversentimental  strain  of  the 
period.  We  could  well  spare  an  occasional 
account  of  what  one  might  infer  to  be  a  common 
habit  of  love-lorn  Indian  maidens — that  of  cast- 
ing themselves  headlong  from  inaccessible  cliffs  at 
sunset, — to  make  room  for  some  of  the  humorous 
and  fanciful  tales  of  the  animals  that  the  Indians 
knew  so  well  and  to  which  they  lived  so  near. 
The  Zufii  folk-tales  collected  by  Frank  Gushing 
have  much  of  this  element  in  them,  and  it  con- 
stitutes one  of  their  many  charms. 

East  Indian  folk-lore  is  peculiarly  rich  in  tales 
of  animals — fables,  bits  of  beast-wisdom  and 
beast-adventure.  It  may  be  that  this  fact  co- 
operated with  his  own  gift  to  make  Rudyard 
Kipling  the  greatest  of  all  modern  makers  of 


180    Literature  in  the  Elementary  School 

animal-stories.  The  Jungle  Books  stand  unique 
and  imperishable  as  one  of  the  perfect  art- 
products  of  the  nineteenth  century.  Like  every- 
thing else  that  is  true  art,  these  stories  never  be- 
come stale.  This  gives  them  a  peculiar  value.  For 
the  children  who  have  had  them  at  home  are 
always  willing  to  hear  them  again  with  the  class. 
We  can  read  them  to  the  third  grade  for  the 
story,  and  with  the  sixth  grade  for  the  style,  and 
the  eighth  grade  is  not  above  hearing  Toomai  of 
the  Elephants  at  any  time.  The  teacher  himself 
will  find  unfailing  satisfaction  in  them  because, 
in  addition  to  all  their  charms  as  interpretations 
of  the  beasts  and  presentation  of  human  nature, 
they  show  all  the  marks  of  expert  workmanship. 
This  appears  in  the  masterly  structure  of  the 
story,  the  organization  of  the  material,  the 
economy  of  incident,  the  successful  style  which 
combines  in  a  most  unusual  way,  a  reserve  and 
finish  that  would  become  a  literary  essayist,  with 
a  power  of  vivid  and  striking  phrase  that  charac- 
terizes the  most  successful  journalist.  So  that 
teacher  and  children  are  both  interested  and 
disciplined  by  every  reading  of  the  Jungle  Books. 
Among  all  their  verse  literature,  from  the 
Mother  Goose  melodies  to  Wordsworth  in  the 
eighth  grade,  the  children  will  find  poems  about 
animals.  A  catalogue  of  the  nursery  and 


Nature  and  Animal  Stories  181 

fairy-book  animals  is  a  very  instructive  document 
— indeed,  a  catalogue  of  poetical  beasts  in  gen- 
eral, is  very  illuminating.  All  the  verses  about 
animals  that  have  come  down  to  us  in  the  tradi- 
tionary jingles  are  good  as  art  and  on  the  whole, 
fair  to  the  animals.  "Baa,  Black  Sheep,"  "The 
Mouse  Ran  Up  the  Clock,"  "Johnny  Shuter's 
Mare,"  and  all  the  others,  yield  the  fruits  of 
literature,  but  only  after  much  torturing,  the 
fruits  of  science.  Gradually  to  these  we  add  such 
as  Cowper's  tame  but  touching  pictures  of  his 
pets;  Wordsworth's  tender  and  far-seeing  poems 
about  the  shepherds  and  their  flocks,  the  doe  and 
the  hart,  the  pet  lamb,  the  faithful  dogs ;  Blake's 
wonderful  pair  of  poems,  "The  Tiger"  and  "The 
Lamb;"  Mary  Lamb's  exquisite  picture  of  the 
boy  and  the  snake ;  Emerson's  "The  Bumble  Bee ;" 
those  splendid  imaginative  characterizations  of  the 
beasts  from  the  thirty-eighth  to  the  forty-first 
chapters  of  Job;  "The  Jackdaw  of  Rheims;" 
"How  They  Brought  the  Good  News."  Why 
extend  the  actual  list?  They  are  all  things  that 
place  the  animals  which  appear  in  them  in  their 
romantic  or  tender  relations  to  human  beings,  or 
interpret  in  a  dramatic  and  literary  way  the 
imaginary  consciousness  of  the  animal. 

There  is  little  danger  of  making  poetry  that 
is  good  enough  to  be  given  as  poetry,  do  the  work 


1 8a    Literature  in  the  Elementary  School 

of  information-teaching.  It  seems  easy  to  see  in 
the  case  of  the  poem,  with  its  more  imaginative 
method  and  its  more  artificial  form,  that  you 
spoil  it  as  art  when  you  teach  it  as  science.  This 
fact  is  equally  true  of  a  good  literary  story. 


CHAPTER  XI 

SYMBOLISTIC  STORIES,   FABLES,  AND  OTHER 
APOLOGUES 

It  is  not  possible,  in  the  plan  adopted  for  this 
little  book,  to  keep  the  topics  always  strictly 
apart.  It  is  not  possible,  for  example,  to  relegate 
to  one  section  all  one  has  to  say  about  folk-  and 
fairy-stories,  and  to  another  all  about  fables, 
because  each  type  has  so  many  aspects  and  radia- 
tions. Fables  are  stories;  most  of  them  are  ani- 
mal-stories; they  are  symbolistic  or  figurative  or 
allegorical — so  that  one  must  approach  them 
from  many  points  of  view,  and  take  them  into 
consideration  in  many  connections.  There  need 
be,  therefore,  no  apology  for  taking  up  in  this 
new  section  topics  partially  discussed  elsewhere. 

It  seems  quite  consonant  with  our  best  conclu- 
sions about  younger  children  to  say  that,  on  the 
whole,  in  the  earlier  years  of  their  school  life 
their  literature  should  be  of  that  objective  kind 
where  no  more  is  meant  than  meets  the  eye. 
They  may  have  tales  of  adventure,  of  plain  experi- 
ence, of  highly  imaginative  experience,  of  animal 
life,  of  fairyland;  but  as  far  as  possible  let  them 
be  such  as  contain  no  occult  and  secondary  mean- 
183 


184    Literature  in  the  Elementary  School 

ings.  There  are  many  things  desirable  for  all 
children,  and  under  certain  school  conditions  com- 
pulsory or  indispensable  for  some  children, 
which  do  have  this  secondary  meaning.  Such,  if 
one  uses  them,  are  the  stories  from  the  great 
myths ;  such  are  practically  all  of  Andersen's  Mdr- 
chen;  such  are  the  legendary  stories  of  the  Hebrew 
patriarchs.  Of  course,  the  parent  or  teacher  who 
presents  these  things  to  his  children  may  say  that 
the  children  never  perceive  or  even  suspect  an 
inner  meaning.  And  it  is  true  that,  with  great 
care  and  skill,  the  objective  upper  surface  may  be 
kept  before  some  children.  But,  on  the  whole,  it 
is  good  morality  and  good  pedagogy  to  give  to 
the  children  nothing  that  you  are  not  willing,  even 
desirous,  that  they  should  probe  to  the  bottom. 
It  is  always  a  misfortune  when  one  must  say  to  a 
child,  "I  can't  explain  that  to  you  now;"  "You 
can't  understand  that  yet;"  so  much  a  misfortune 
that  no  teacher  should  ever  invite  it.  If  you  have 
ever  looked  into  the  faces  of  the  fifth  grade  when 
they  were  searching  you  with  questions  to  get  at 
the  meaning  of  Andersen's  pessimistic  story  of 
The  Little  White  Hen;  if  you  have  seen  the  sixth 
grade  grow  melancholy,  with  a  vague  augury  of 
trouble  they  could  not  fathom,  when  you  have 
read  to  them  the  brilliant  but  tragic  little  apologue 
of  Mr.  Seguin's  Goat;  if  you  have  been  obliged 


Symbolistic  Stories,  Fables,  etc.         185 

to  explain  to  some  puzzled  and  suspicious  eight- 
year-old  the  raison  d'etre  of  the  clock-ticking 
alligator  in  Peter  Pan,  you  have  resolved  here- 
after to  give  them  no  symbolism,  or  to  give  them 
symbolism  whose  presence  they  could  not  possibly 
suspect  (a  most  difficult  thing  to  do  in  the  case 
of  that  many-minded,  hundred-eyed  child,  the 
class),  or  to  give  such  symbolism  as  would  invite 
them  into  paths  where  you  would  gladly  have 
them  walk,  whose  most  ultimate  implication  you 
are  at  least  willing  to  explain  to  them.  Of  course, 
this  principle  cannot  be  pushed  to  its  logical 
extreme;  merely  logical  extremes  are  always 
absurd.  One  does  not  go  into  the  philosophical 
depths  of  the  special  historical  epoch  he  chooses 
for  his  children,  nor  does  he  instruct  them  in  the 
remote  scientific  principles  behind  their  window- 
garden  or  their  aquarium  of  polywogs  and  sala- 
manders. But,  if  he  is  wise,  he  hopes  to  choose 
such  work,  and  present  such  aspects  of  it,  as  con- 
tain no  insoluble  mystery,  and  do  not  tempt  the 
children  into  paths  for  which  their  feet  are  not 
ready. 

So,  when  one  is  choosing  literature  it  is  very 
easy  to  fill  all  the  time  the  children  have  for  it 
in  the  first  four  or  five  years  of  school  with 
things  that  are  largely  objective,  and  that,  so  far 
as  their  large  framework  goes,  mean  just  what 


1 86     Literature  in  the  Elementary  School 

they  say.  Indeed,  will  not  most  modern  teachers 
concede  that  throughout  the  period  and  in  all  his 
subjects  it  is  for  the  mental  good  of  the  child  not 
to  be  called  upon  too  frequently  to  formulate  prin- 
ciples, or  habitually  to  look  below  the  surface  of 
his  facts  for  interpretations  and  secondary  mean- 
ings? Of  course,  he  must  be  led  by  the  natural 
stages  to  see  through  figures  of  speech,  and  to 
understand  and  apply  proverbs,  and  the  proverbial 
manner  of  speech. 

Proverbs,  indeed,  exemplify  and  epitomize  the 
essentially  literary  type  of  thinking  and  speaking. 
They  are  concrete  and  picturesque  rather  than 
abstract,  specific  rather  than  general,  though  we 
are  to  understand  by  them  also  the  abstract  and 
the  general;  this  is  the  fact  that  gives  them 
their  unique  value  as  literary  training.  The 
teacher  must  call  upon  his  wisdom  in  choosing 
proverbs  suitable  for  the  children.  Many  proverbs 
are  pessimistic,  even  cynical :  "It  never  rains  but  it 
pours;"  many  embody  a  merely  commonplace  or 
unmoral  code :  "Honesty  is  the  best  policy ;"  some 
are  ambiguous:  "There's  honor  among  thieves;" 
some  the  modern  world  has  outgrown;  many  are 
too  mature,  too  occult,  or  too  worldly  for  a  child. 
But  a  great  store  remains — vivid,  practical  bits  of 
experience  and  tested  wisdom  which  will  develop 
a  child's  mental  quickness,  will  do  something 


Symbolistic  Stories,  Fables,  etc.         187 

toward  equipping  him  with  the  common  wisdom 
of  his  race,  and  will  accustom  him  to  one  of  the 
most  characteristic  methods  of  literature.  This 
is  a  good  place  to  say  that  good  results  never 
seem  to  come  of  asking  the  children  for  an  expo- 
sition of  the  proverb.  Indeed,  it  is  extremely 
difficult  to  get  from  children  an  exposition  or 
definition  of  any  kind.  The  better  way  of  mak- 
ing sure  that  they  have  appropriated  a  proverb  is 
to  ask  them  to  invent  or  re-call  an  incident  or  a 
situation  to  which  the  proverb  will  apply.  Natu- 
rally this  is  not  an  exercise  for  the  youngest  chil- 
dren. 

In  the  earlier  years  a  great  many  of  the  simple 
old  fables  may  be  taught.  One  is  tempted  to  say 
that  the  traditionary  or  given  moral  should  never 
be  told  to  the  children;  but  that  is  a  little  too 
sweeping.  As  a  rule,  however,  it  is  better  to  lead 
them  to  make  their  own  interpretation  or  general- 
ization, in  those  cases  where  such  a  thing  is  de- 
sired. For,  as  a  matter  of  fact,  many  of  the 
fables  are  so  good  as  stories  that  they  may  often 
be  left  to  stand  merely  as  pleasant  tales. 

But  as  the  children  grow  more  penetrating, 
the  fable  is  the  best  possible  form  of  symbolistic 
literature  to  set  them  at  first.  These,  with  the 
minor  exercise  in  the  apprehension  and  interpre- 
tation of  figures  of  speech,  will  be  their  share  of 


1 88    Literature  in  the  Elementary  School 

the  symbolistic  kind  of  writing  for  several  years. 
Then  we  may  introduce  more  specimens,  and 
more  complex  specimens,  until  in  the  sixth-  and 
seventh-grade  periods  they  may  be  able  to  inter- 
pret the  universal  and  symbolic  side  of  much  that 
they  read,  and  to  handle  with  ease  and  delight 
such  parables  as  The  Great  Stone  Face  or  The 
Bee-Man  of  Orn.  Their  experience  in  litera- 
ture will  then  harmonize  with  their  experi- 
ence in  other  directions;  for  they  should  then, 
or  immediately  afterward,  be  beginning  to  look 
for  generalizations,  to  carry  abstract  symbols,  and 
to  substitute  them  at  will  for  concrete  matter. 
At  the  same  time,  then,  they  will  study  these 
fables  as  apologues,  making  in  all  cases  their  own 
moral  and  application. 

Perhaps  this  is  the  place  to  insert  a  caution 
against  the  practice  of  extracting  a  "deeper 
meaning"  out  of  a  child  when  he  does  not  easily 
see  it,  or  of  so  instructing  him  that  he  comes  to 
regard  every  story  that  he  reads  as  a  sort  of  pic- 
ture puzzle  in  which  he  is  to  find  a  "concealed 
robber"  in  the  shape  of  a  moral  or  a  general  les- 
son. It  is  a  trivial  habit  of  mind,  a  pernicious 
critical  obsession,  of  which  many  over-earnest 
adult  readers  are  victims — that  of  wringing  from 
every  and  any  bit  of  writing  an  abstract  or  moral- 
istic meaning.  Another  practical  caution  may  be 


Symbolistic  Stories,  Fables,  etc.         189 

needed  as  to  these  interpretations:  Do  not  leave 
the  discussion  until  the  class  has  worked  out  from 
the  fable  a  moral  or  application  that  practically 
the  whole  class  accepts  and  the  teacher  indorses. 
Do  not  accept  numerous  guesswork  explanations 
and  let  them  pass.  Even  the  little  children,  if 
they  are  allowed  to  interpret  at  all,  should  be 
pushed  on  and  guided  to  a  sound  and  essential 
exegesis — to  use  a  term  more  formidable  than 
the  thing  it  names.  Do  not  let  them  linger  even 
tentatively  in  that  lamentable  state  of  making 
their  explanation  rest  upon  some  minor  detail, 
some  feature  on  the  outskirts  of  the  story.  Help 
them  always  to  go  to  the  center,  and  to  make  the 
essential  interpretation.  Make  a  point  of  this 
whenever  they  have  a  story  that  calls  for  inter- 
pretation at  all.  To  the  end  that  they  may  be 
sincere  and  thorough,  choose  those  things  whose 
secondary  meanings  they  may  as  children  feel  and 
understand.  The  sixth-grade  children  could,  in 
most  schools,  interpret  The  Ugly  Ducking.  They 
may  easily  be  led  into  the  inner  significance  of 
The  Bee-Man  of  Orn  or  Old  Pipes  and  the  Dryad. 
They  may  go  on  in  seventh  grade  to  certain  of 
Hawthorne's — perhaps  "The  Great  Stone  Face" 
and  others  of  the  Twice  Told  Tales;  though 
Hawthorne  is  so  sombre  and  so  moralistic  that  it  is 
not  good  for  some  children  to  read  his  tales,  still 


190    Literature  in  the  Elementary  School 

less  to  linger  over  them  and  interpret  them.  A 
mature  and  experienced  eighth  grade  could  study 
"The  Snow  Image" ;  but  it  is  too  delicate  and  re- 
mote for  all  eighth-grade  classes.  "The  Minister's 
Black  Veil"  is  an  example  of  the  peculiar  Haw- 
thornesque  gloom,  which  the  children  would  not 
understand  or  by  ill  luck  would  understand,  and 
suffer  the  consequent  dangerous  depression.  Ad- 
dison's  "The  Vision  of  Mirza"  is  an  example  of  a 
standard  little  allegory,  simple  and  easy,  and  at 
the  same  time  full  of  meaning  and  fruitful  of 
reflection  for  the  children.  The  parables  of  the 
gospels  are  quite  unique  in  their  beauty  and 
ethical  significance,  and  afford  an  opportunity  for 
a  most  valuable  kind  of  training  in  literary  exe- 
gesis. Certain  tales  from  the  Gesta  Romanorum 
might  be  read  in  these  older  grades,  adding  the 
interpretations  of  the  ecclesiastics  for  the  gaiety 
of  the  class,  and  as  a  terrible  warning  against 
wresting  an  allegory  out  of  a  story  by  sheer 
violence. 

There  are  several  reasons  why  the  extended 
allegories  do  not  yield  good  results  with  a  class. 
In  the  first  place,  it  takes  too  long  to  get  through 
them,  so  that  the  process  keeps  the  children  too 
long  in  an  atmosphere  of  allegorical  and  sym- 
bolistic meanings,  which  will  confuse  and  baffle 
them.  In  the  second  place,  all  the  extended  liter- 


Symbolistic  Stories,  Fables,  etc.         igi 

ary  allegories  have  each  behind  it  a  complex  sys- 
tem of  abstract  theology  or  morals,  or  some  other 
philosophy,  which  cannot  be  conveyed  to  children, 
but  which  cannot  be  hidden  from  the  class. 
Then  in  any  long  allegory,  such  as  The  Pilgrim's 
Progress  or  The  Fairie  Queene,  the  multiplied 
detail  all  loaded  with  secondary  significance  is 
extremely  misleading  to  all  but  expert  readers. 
As  Ruskin  says  of  myth,  we  may  say  of  all  other 
allegory:  the  more  it  means,  the  more  numerous 
and  the  more  grotesque  do  the  details  become. 
And  we  would  not  choose  in  a  child's  literary 
training  any  large  mass  of  material  in  which 
grotesqueness  is  a  prevailing  note.  Nearly  all 
children  are  interested  in  The  Pilgrim's  Progress, 
and  will  listen  with  eagerness  to  the  romantic 
and  adventurous  side  of  Christian's  experience, 
but  not,  of  course,  to  the  didactic  and  theological 
passages.  And  as  a  matter  of  fact,  modern  reli- 
gious teaching  and  the  new  race-consciousness  of 
our  generation  have  taken  all  sense  of  reality  out 
of  Bunyan's  theology  and  religious  psychology; 
and  of  course,  it  can  be  read  to  the  modern  child 
only  cursorily,  as  in  the  home — never  in  detail 
and  with  the  privilege  of  questioning  as  in  the 
class. 

One  would  expect  a  really  good  eighth-grade 
child  to  be  able  to  detect  and  express  the  lesson 


192    Literature  in  tlie  Elementary  School 

in  Lowell's  The  Vision  of  Sir  Launfal,  or  Tenny- 
son's Sir  Galahad,  or  Longfellow's  King  Robert 
of  Sicily.  It  need  hardly  be  said  that  the  exercises 
in  the  symbolistic  kinds  of  literature  are  to  be 
inserted  here  and  there  among  the  other  lessons. 
It  would  be  a  serious  mistake  to  give  any  class 
a  whole  year — or  a  whole  month,  indeed — of  this 
experience  in  reading. 


CHAPTER  XII 

POETRY      -    ^i«      M0  * 

v  5T»t  m  i 

There  are  certain  results  in  literary  training 

that  can  be  secured  with  children  only  by  the 
teaching  of  poetry.  In  story  we  and  they  are 
intent  upon  subject-matter,  and  on  the  larger 
matters  of  the  imaginative  creation.  And,  while 
we  older  students  know  that  the  choice  and 
arrangement  of  material  involved  in  the  making 
of  a  story  are  extremely  important  and  most 
truly  educative,  we  also  know  that  they  belong 
in  the  larger  framework  of  the  story  and  do  not 
lend  themselves  to  close  inspection  or  detailed 
study  when  our  scholars  are  elementary  children. 
Again,  most  of  the  stories  best  suited  to  the 
children  must  be  used  in  translated  and  adapted 
versions,  and  all  of  them  should  be  told  in  a  way 
that  varies  more  or  less  from  telling  to  telling, 
in  vocabulary,  in  figure,  and  occasionally  in 
material  detail.  As  a  result,  the  stories,  until 
we  come  down  to  the  very  last  year  of  the 
period,  make  on  the  children  no  impression 
of  the  inevitableness  of  form,  or  of  any  of  the 
smaller  devices  of  style  and  finish.  These 
may  be  brought  to  bear  in  verse.  It  should  not 
193 


* 

194     Literature  in  the  Elementary  School 

be  necessary  to  say  again  that  the  children  will 
know  nothing  of  "larger  effects"  and  "smaller 
details;"  but  the  teacher  should  know  them,  and 
should  have  some  plan  that  will  include  both  in 
his  teaching.  Neither  is  it  necessary  to  say  that 
these  minor  matters  of  style  and  finish  that  we 
will  pause  over  with  our  elementary  class  will 
prove  to  be  very  simple  matters  from  the  point 
of  view  of  the  expert  and  adult  critic. 

It  is  verse  that  gives  the  child  most  experi- 
ence in  the  musical  side  of  literature.  The 
rhythm  and  cadence  of  prose  have  their  own 
music — perhaps  more  delicate  and  pleasing  to 
the  trained  adult  ear  than  the  rhythm  of  verse. 
But  the  elementary  children  need  the  simple  strik- 
ing rhythm  of  verse,  of  verse  whose  rhythm  is 
quite  unmistakable.  Indeed,  it  is  profitable  in 
the  first  verses  that  children  learn  to  have  an 
emphatic  meter,  so  that  the  musical  intention  may 
not  be  missed,  and  that  it  may  be  possible  easily 
to  accompany  the  recitation  of  the  verses  with 
movement,  even  concerted  movement  as  of  clap- 
ping or  marching.  One  who  is  trying  to  write  a 
sober  treatise  in  a  matter-of-fact  way  dares  not, 
lest  he  be  set  down  as  the  veriest  mystic,  say  all  the 
things  that  might  be  said  about  the  function  of 
rhythm,  especially  in  its  more  pronounced  form 
of  meter,  among  a  community  of  children,  no 


Poetry  195 

matter  what  the  size  of  the  group — how  rhythmic 
motion,  or  the  flow  of  measured  and  beautiful 
sounds,  harmonizes  their  differences,  tunes  them 
up  to  their  tasks,  disciplines  their  conduct,  com- 
forts their  hurts,  quiets  their  nerves ;  all  this  apart 
from  the  facts  more  or  less  important  from  the 
point  of  view  of  literature,  that  it  cultivates  their 
ear,  improves  their  taste,  and  provides  them  a 
genuinely  artistic  pleasure.  If  it  happens  that  the 
sounds  they  are  chanting  be  a  bit  of  real  poetry, 
it  further  gives  them  perhaps  more  than  one 
charming  image,  and  many  pleasant  or  useful 
words. 

Most  children  are  pleased  with  the  additional 
music  of  rhyme.  This  is  true  of  all  kinds  of 
rhyme,  but  of  course  it  is  the  regular  terminal 
rhyme  that  most  children  notice  and  enjoy  and 
remember. 

Sing  a  song  of  sixpence, 

A  pocket  full  of  rye, 
Four  and  twenty  blackbirds 

Baked  in  a  pie. 

all  the  children  will  rejoice  in  rye — pie.  But 
there  will  be  some  to  whom  sing — song — six- 
pence— pocket,  full — four,  blackbirds — baked, 
are  so  many  delights,  and  there  may  be  some  to 
whom  the  wonderful  chime  of  the  vowels  will 
make  music.  Anyone  who  knows  children  will 


196    Literature  in  the  Elementary  School 

have  noticed  the  pleasure  that  the  merest  babies 
will  take  in  beautiful  or  especially  pat  collocations 
of  syllables.  A  child  whom  I  knew,  just  begin- 
ning to  talk,  would  say  to  himself  many  times  a 
day,  and  always  with  a  smile  of  amused  pleasure, 
the  phrases  "apple-batter  pudding,"  "picallilli 
pickles,"  "up  into  the  cherry  tree.'1  "piping  down 
the  valleys  wild."  It  is  probably  true  that  some 
of  his  apparent  pleasure  was  that  species  of  hys- 
teria produced  in  most  babies  by  any  mild  explo- 
sion, and  the  little  fusillade  of  p's  in  the  examples 
he  liked  best  would  acount  for  a  part  of  his 
enjoyment.  But  we  must  think  that  there  was 
pleasure  there,  and,  whether  it  were  physical  or 
mental,  it  arose  from  the  pleasing  combination 
of  verbal  sounds.  Most  children  have  this 
ear  for  the  music  of  words;  and  some  attempt 
should  be  made  to  evoke  it  in  those  that  have 
it  not. 

This  quality,  then,  is  the  first  thing  we  ask  of 
the  verse  we  choose  for  the  youngest  children. 
The  mere  jingles,  provided  they  are  really 
musical,  are  useful  to  emphasize  this  side  of  verse, 
because,  being  free  from  content,  they  can  give 
themselves  entirely  to  sound.  It  is  also  most 
desirable  that  some  of  these  earliest  verses  be  set 
to  music  that  the  children  can  sing ;  that  the  class 
march  to  the  rhythm  of  recited  verses;  that  they 


Poetry  197 

be  taught,  if  possible,  to  dance  to  some  of  them. 
Some  such  form  of  accompaniment  of  the  verses, 
deepens  the  impression  of  the  music,  records  in 
the  child's  consciousness  an  impression  of  the 
poem  as  an  image  of  motion,  and  opens  a  channel 
for  the  expression  of  the  mood  produced  in  the 
children  by  the  verses — a  more  acceptable  channel 
of  expression,  certainly,  for  all  the  lyrics  and  for 
most  of  the  narrative  verses,  than  mere  recitation, 
and  a  more  artistic  one  than  what  we  commonly 
know  and  dread  as  elocution. 

The  teaching  of  verse  gives  a  chance  and  an 
invitation  to  linger  over  and  enjoy  many  fine  and 
delicate  aspects  of  the  art  that  we  are  likely  to 
miss  in  the  story.  Something  in  the  nature  of 
verse — the  condensation,  the  careful  arrange- 
ment, the  chosen  words — seems  to  call  upon  us 
to  go  slowly  with  it.  It  may  be  that  we  linger 
to  apprehend  one  by  one  the  details  of  an  image 
or  picture,  like — 

Daffy-down  dilly  has  come  up  to  town 
In  a  yellow  petticoat  and  a  green  gown, 

The  captain  was  a  duck,  with  a  packet  on  his  back ; 

The  cattle  are  grazing. 

Their  heads  never  raising, 

There   are   forty   feeding  l;ke  one; 

In  the  pool  drowse  the  cattl«  up  to  their  knees, 
The  crows  fly  over  by  twos  and  threes; 


198     Literature  in  the  Elementary  School 
some  apt  or  beautiful  phrase — 

Snowy  summits  old  in  story; 

some  bit  of  simple  wisdom  that  deserves  ponder- 
ing; some  flash  of  wit  or  epigram,  or  enticing 
touch  of  nonsense. 

These  are  really  about  all  that  we  would  pause 
over  in  teaching  verses  to  the  younger  children. 
Indeed,  are  not  these  elements  about  all  of  what 
we  call  the  smaller  matters  of  literary  art  that  ele- 
mentary children  may  be  expected  to  concern 
'.themselves  with — the  music  of  the  spoken  verse, 
^     appreciation  of  the  beauty  or  adequacy  of  striking 
pictures  and  images,  recognition  of  some  specially 
fit  epithet,  interpretation  of  an  aphorism  or  a  par- 
•  adox  or  a  bit  of  nonsense?    We  will  discuss  later 
some  possible  ways  of  getting  these  things  done. 

When  we  say  that  a  poem  gives  us  our  best 
chance  to  study  these  finer  details,  we  should  not 
by  any  means  understand  that  in  teaching  a  poem 
we  arc  to  ignore  the  other  matter  of  plan  and 
structure.  The  very  condensation  and  beautiful 
organization  of  a  poem  are  likely  to  result  in  a 
charming  plan,  which  both  adds  to  the  children's 
sense  of  its  beauty  and  helps  to  fix  it  in  their 
memory.  Every  teacher  will  notice — merely  to 
mention  examples— the  perfect  structure,  what 
we  have  called  the  "pattern,"  of  Stevenson's 


Poetry  199 

"Dark  brown  is  the  river,"  of  Allingham's  "I 
wish  I  were  a  primrose,"  of  Wordsworth's,  "I 
heard  a  thousand  blended  notes;"  and  every 
teacher  will  realize  the  greater  class  utility  of  a 
poem  with  such  a  structure. 

The  kinds  of  poetry  suitable  by  virtue  of  their 
content  for  the  children  throughout  the  whole  ele- 
mentary period  are  first,  Jyrics  of  the  simpler 
varieties,  beginning  with  those  which  are  practi- 
cally only  jingles,  and  going  on  to  those  that  are 
more  complex  in  form  and  more  mature  in 
thought,  but  which  still  record,  as  it  were,  the 
first  reaction  of  the  mind,  the  primary  mood,  not 
the  complex  and  remote  moods  of  developed  lyric 
poetry;  and  second,  poetry  of  the  epic  kind, 
beginning  with  the  Mother  Goose  ballads,  and 
advancing  to  the  objective  heroic  ballads  in  which 
English  literature  is  so  rich,  and  perhaps  (un- 
doubtedly in  certain  schools)  including  some  of 
the  longer  narrative  poems  of  the  type  of  idyls. 

It  is  clear  to  most  teachers  that  the  less 
the  earlier  lyrics  say,  the  better.  The  .simplicity 
of  the  content  makes  it  possible  to  empha- 
size all  the  more  the  music  and  the  motion.  As 
the  lyrics  increase  in  content,  and  as  we  begin  to 
expect  the  children  to  enter  into  the  mood  which 
their  poem  reflects,  it  becomes  important  to  select 
such  as  record  a  mood  or  an  experience  which 


2oo    Literature  in  the  Elementary  School 

they  can  apprehend  or  might  legitimately  appre- 
hend. Luckily,  in  our  day  it  is  no  longer  neces- 
sary to  remonstrate  against  what  one  may  almost 
call  the  crime  of  requiring  children  to  study  and 
to  return  "The  Barefoot  Boy/'  "Still  sits  the 
schoolhouse  by  the  road,"  "I  remember,  I  remem- 
ber the  house  where  I  was  born" — adult  reminis- 
cence of  childhood,  which  is  undoubtedly  the 
most  alien  of  moods  and  processes  to  the  child. 
But  we  are  likely  to  be  caught  by  the  apparent 
simplicity  of  certain  verses  which,  written  after 
the  pattern  of  A  Child's  Garden — indeed,  the 
class  includes  some  of  these  very  poems — record 
feelings  about  children  and  childhood.  These 
verses,  like  some  of  the  delightful  stories  and 
studies  mentioned  in  a  previous  chapter  are 
studies  and  realizations  of  the  child's  con- 
sciousness calculated  to  delight  and  illuminate 
the  adult  reader.  If  children  rfcad  and  under- 
stood them,  the  result  would  be  that  ghastly 
spectacle — a  child  conscious  of  his  own  child- 
hood. 

No  poetry  given  to  children  should  be  too. 
imaginative,  too  figurative,  or  too  emotional. 
Here,  to  be  sure,  one  must  judge  afresh  for  each 
class.  It  is  obvious  that  children  of  the  eighth 
grade  can  apprehend  a  poem  that  would  bewilder 
the  sixth;  that  children  in  one  community,  even 


Poetry  201 

x 

-n  one  neighborhood,  will  understand  a  poem 
which  children  of  a  different  community  and  up- 
bringing could  not  fathom.  But  the  standard  is, 
after  all,  not  infinitely  variable.  A  good  average 
seventh  grade  almost  anywhere  would  appreciate 
without  difficulty,  including  the  spiritual  applica- 
tion, Tennyson's  "Bugle  Song;"  they  could  not 
find  their  way  among  the  many  figures  and  the 
alien  imaginative  mood,  the  poignant  unknown 
emotion,  of  "Tears,  idle  tears." 

It  is  not  easy  to  go  wrong  in  choosing  the  bal- 
lads. And  by  "ballads"  -  we  are  to  understand 
the  short  narrative  poem,  traditionary  or  artistic. 
The  folk-ballads  need  translation  here  and  there, 
and  are  scarcely  available  at  all  for  the  youngest 
children.  But  those  who  are  old  enough  to  hear 
the  Robin  Hood  tales  will  enjoy  the  folk-ballads, 
if  the  teacher  takes  pains  to  prepare  them  and  read 
them  aright.  As  in  the  case  of  some  of  the  heroic 
epics,  some  editing  is  necessary  for  most  of  the 
ballads.  They  should  be  given  in  the  "say  and 
sing,"  manner,  turning  the  duller  or  the  link  por- 
tions into  prose  narrative,  and  reading  the  excit- 
ing and  beautiful  passages  in  the  original  form. 
Even  this  accommodated  form  of  the  folk-ballads 
may  prove  impossible  in  some  classes.  There  are 
ballads  ideal  for  the  grades  in  nearly  all  the 
modern  poets — Cowper,  Scott,  Wordsworth, 


2O2     Literature  in  the  Elementary  School 

Campbell,  Browning,  Longfellow,  Whittier,  Kip- 
ling. 

It  is  not  so  easy  to  choose  for  elementary  chil- 
dren among  the  longer  narrative  poems.  As  a 
matter  of  fact,  a  great  number  of  them  are  of  the 
idyllic  kind,  and  there  is  in  this  class  of  poems 
something  soft  and  meditative,  or  over-emotional 
and,  if  one  must  say  it — sentimental  or  super- 
romantic,  that  fits  them  for  the  comprehension  of 
older  readers,  and  spoils  them  for  the  children. 
Others,  such  as  Scott's  narrative  poems,  are  too 
long  and  a  bit  too  difficult  for  children  younger 
than  the  high-school  age.  Here  and  there  one 
finds  a  poem,  like  "Paul  Revere's  Ride,"  really 
more  ballad  than  tale;  a  tender  simple  tale  like 
"King  Robert  of  Sicily,"  for  a  mature  eighth 
grade.  "The  Vision  of  Sir  Launfal;"  not  for- 
getting Morris'  The  Man  Born  to  Be  King, 
"The  Fostering  of  Auslag,"  and  perhaps  other 
things  from  The  Earthly  Paradise.  The  simple 
but  lofty  style  and  feeling  of  "Sohrab  and 
Rustum"  makes  it  possible  for  the  older  children. 
Any  teacher  who  knows  both  literature  and 
children  will  see  at  once  what  it  is  that  constitutes 
the  fitness  of  these  poems,  and  what  the  unfitness 
of  "Enoch  Arden,"  "The  Courtship  of  Miles 
Standish,"  or  "Lancelot  and  Elaine." 

Perhaps  the  only  library  of  literature  that  is 


Poetry  203 

perfectly  suited  to  its  purpose  and  its  public,  and 
the  only  collection  of  masterpieces  to  be  put  into 
the  hands  of  its  readers  without  misgiving,  is  the 
nursery  rhymes  that  we  call  Mother  Goose's 
Melodies.  It  needs  no  more  general  praise,  and 
there  is  no  room  for  specifications.  But  it  is 
always  in  order  to  urge  teachers  in  this  case,  as 
in  that  of  the  fairy-tales,  to  increase  their  knowl- 
edge of  those  traditionary  bits  of  art.  When  one 
knows  their  origin  and  something  of  their  social 
and  literary  history,  they  take  on  new  dignity 
and  importance.  One  ceases  to  look  upon  them 
as  mere  nonsense  to  be  rattled  off  for  the  amuse- 
ment of  the  baby,  and  learns  to  see  them  as  little 
treasures  of  primitive  art,  miraculously  preserved 
and  passed  down  from  baby  to  baby  through  these 
many  generations:  bits  of  old  song  and  ballad, 
games  and  charms,  riddles  and  incantations,  tales 
of  charming  incidents  and  episodes — a  gallery  of 
unmatchable  portraits,  sallies  of  wit  just  witty 
enough  for  the  four-year-old,  mild  but  adequate 
nonsense;  all  freed  by  the  lapse  of  years  and  the 
innocence  of  its  devotees  from  every  taint  of 
utilitarianism  and  occasionalism,  winnowed  and 
tested  by  the  generations  of  mothers  and  babies 
that  have  criticized  them,  they  yield  a  new  charm 
at  every  fresh  reading  to  the  most  experienced 
reader.  They  should  constitute  the  first  literary 


2O4    Literature  in  the  Elementary  School 

material  of  every  English-speaking  child.  Every 
well-nurtured  child  will  come  to  school  already 
in  possession  of  many  of  them.  But  he  will  be 
glad  to  go  over  them  for  the  sake  of  those  less 
fortunate,  as  well  as  for  the  sake  of  enjoying 
them  with  the  whole  community,  and  in  consid- 
eration of  the  new  pictures,  games,  and  songs 
that  will  be  joined  with  them. 

Stevenson's  A  Child's  Garden  of  Verses  is  in 
some  sense  a  quite  unique  poetic  production ;  and 
this  remains  true  in  spite  of  the  many  things  pro- 
duced in  imitation  of  it  and  inspired  by  it.  It  is 
a  wonderful  example  of  the  recovery  by  a  grown 
person  of  the  thread  of  continuity  leading  him 
back  to  actual  childhood;  the  recovery,  too,  in 
many  instances  of  the  child's  consciousness.  It 
is  the  gate  for  us  all  to  the  lost  garden  of  our  own 
childhood,  pathetic  in  every  line  with  the  evanes- 
cence of  childhood,  "whose  hand  is  ever  at  his 
lips,  bidding  adieu." 

Yet  in  spite  of  this  most  poignant  appeal  to 
the  grown-up  person,  many  of  the  verses  are 
ideally  suited  to  children.  They  do  not  induce  in 
them  our  mood  of  pathos  and  regret,  nor  do  they 
set  their  child-readers  imaginatively  in  another 
experience.  They  do  very  really  constitute,  as 
Stevenson  suggests,  a  window  through  which  the 
child  sees 


Poetry  205 

Another  child  far,  far  away, 
And  in  another  garden,  play; 

a  child  with  whom  he  tenderly  sympathizes,  at 
whom  he  lovingly  smiles,  at  whose  games  he 
looks  on,  whose  toys  and  books  he  knows  and 
loves. 

The  Child  in  the  Garden  is  an  only  child,  a 
lonely  child,  and  a  very  individualistic  child; 
there  is  no  comradeship  in  the  verses;  they  can- 
not be  becomingly  recited  in  concert;  there  is  not 
a  chorus  or  a  refrain  in  the  whole  book,  in  which 
all  the  children  may  join;  there  is  nothing 
communal  about  them.  In  spite  of  all  the  efforts, 
they  cannot  be  set  to  music,  except  as  solos;  and 
if  the  music  matches  the  mood,  it  is  likely  to  be 
difficult  for  a  child  to  sing.  Several  of  them  are 
too  imaginative — "Windy  Nights,"  "Shadow 
March;"  some  are  a  bit  ironic — "Good  and  Bad 
Children,"  "System,"  "A  Happy  Thought;" 
some  too  poignantly  pathetic — "The  Land  of 
Nod ;"  some  look  at  childhood  too  obviously  with 
the  man's  eyes — "Keepsake  Mill;"  but  all  these 
exceptions  leave  many  altogether  suitable  for  chil- 
dren; and  their  perfect  structure,  their  musical 
verse-form,  their  childlike  objectivity,  and  the 
divine  simplicity  of  their  style  render  them  an 
unceasing  delight. 

Though  the  Child  of  the  Garden  was  a  soli- 


206     Literature  in  the  Elementary  School 

tary  child,  he  had  a  constantly  haunting  sense  of 
the  world  beyond — other  children  in  other  lands, 
the  foreign  countries  he  might  see  by  climbing 
higher,  the  children  who  would  bring  his  boats 
ashore  far  down  the  river,  the  children  singing 
in  far  Japan,  the  long-ago  Egyptian  boys,  hints 
at  the  wider  experience  and  bigger  world  to  which 
the  six-  and  seven-year-old  children  are  so  eagerly 
reaching  out.  At  the  same  time  nobody  but 
Stevenson — nobody  at  least,  that  has  written  a 
book — has  ever  taken  adequately  the  point  of  view 
of  the  human  being  three  feet  high — his  tiny  hori- 
zon, the  small  exquisite  objects  to  which  he  comes 
close,  the  fairy-dells  he  sees,  the  rain-pool  sea, 
the  clover  tree;  nowhere  else  in  art  is  the  little 
world  of  the  little  people  adequately  pictured — 
the  little  world,  and  its  obverse,  the  colossal 
grown-ups,  with  their  elephantine  furniture 
amidst  which  the  little  men  and  women  must 
ordinarily  move. 

Many  of  these  poems  should  be  read  with  the 
single  child  at  home.  For  the  class  at  school  we 
may  use  "Foreign  Lands,"  "Singing,"  "Where 
Go  the  Boats,"  "My  Shadow,"  "The  Swing," 
"My  Ship  and  I" — the  more  objective  and  uni- 
versal of  them. 

There  are  many  pretty  bits  for  the  youngest 
children  in  Christina  Rossetti's  Sing-Song — a 


Poetry  207 

book  of  nursery  rhymes  not  sufficiently  known. 
Certain  of  Blake's  Songs  of  Innocence  the  chil- 
dren should  know,  though  they  are  always  found 
too  delicate  and  contemplative  for  the  whole  class. 
Every  teacher  of  children  should  know  for  his 
own  enlightenment  the  poems  of  Jane  and  Ann 
Taylor,  and  Dr.  Watts's  Poems  for  Infant 
Minds.  Psychologically  speaking,  they  are  in  a 
world  completely  alien  to  the  modern  student  of 
children  and  of  education;  but  there  is  a  stray 
verse  or  two  like  "The  Violet"  or  "How  doth 
the  little  busy  bee,"  that  may  some  day  fit  the 
needs  of  the  class.  Every  friend  of  children, 
teacher  or  parent,  should  know  Keble's  Lyra 
Innocentium;  he  cannot  afford  to  miss  the  tone 
and  atmosphere  of  Wordsworth's  poems  about 
children  and  childhood.  As  a  matter  of  fact,  it  is 
only  a  few  of  Wordsworth's  poems  that  will  go 
well  for  class  study,  though  a  really  enthusiastic 
teacher  may  carry  even  a  large  class  through 
"The  Idle  Shepherd  Boys"  or  "The  Blind  High- 
land Boy;"  the  older  children  should  know 
"Heartleap  Well"  and  "Peter  Bell."  The  true 
Wordsworthian  is  born,  only  occasionally  made; 
if  he  declares  himself  in  a  class  in  elementary 
school,  the  teacher  should  guide  him. 

But  we  should  soon  learn,  and  aways  remem- 
ber, that  the  contemplative  and  idyllic  lyric,  how- 


208     Literature  in  the  Elementary  School 

ever  it  may  delight  the  chosen  child  and  the  adult, 
will,  as  a  rule,  neither  please  nor  train  the  class, 
and  that  poems  written  for  children  and  about  chil- 
dren are  not  at  all  likely  to  be  the  things  children 
love  best  and  most  profit  by;  the  poetry  should 
not  linger  long  in  the  nursery  stage.  The  class 
should  be  pushed  on  as  early  as  possible  into 
simple  but  heroic  ballads,  into  lyrics,  musical  and 
noble,  but  simple  and  easy  as  to  content — all 
chosen  from  the  great  poets. 

Even  if  one  desired  it,  it  would  probably  be 
impossible  to  dislodge  Hiawatha  from  its  shrine 
in  American  elementary  schools;  and  no  one 
ought  to  covet  the  task,  for  the  iconoclast  is  likely 
to  be  set  down  as  a  vulgar  and  egotistic  person. 
Hiawatha  has  become  entrenched  in  the  schools 
by  some  such  reasoning  as  this:  Here  is  a  poem 
written  by  an  American  on  aspects  of  life  among 
the  American  aborigines;  American  children 
should  study  it  as  literature.  Children  ought  to 
be  instructed  in  primitive  life  and  in  myth;  there- 
fore they  should  study  Hiawatha  as  literature. 
Children  should  learn  much  about  nature  and 
should  learn  nature-poetry;  therefore  they  should 
study  Hiawatha  as  literature. 

Of  course,  there  are  pretty  things  in  Hiawatha. 
Some  of  the  passages  about  the  forest  and  the 
waters,  the  making  of  the  canoe,  the  conquest  of 


Poetry  209 

Mondanim,  the  picture-writing,  may  most  profit- 
ably be  interwoven  with  other  things.  It  is 
instructive  both  as  to  literature  and  as  to  fact  to 
put  the  making  of  Robinson  Crusoe's  boat  beside 
the  building  of  Hiawatha's  canoe.  But  there  are 
objections  to  a  long  and  exclusive  course  in  this 
poem.  The  mythical  side  of  it  is  baffling  and  dis- 
couraging. Once  more  let  me  say  that  a  class  is 
an  extremely  acute  and  inquiring  personality; 
after  a  few  days  it  "wants  to  know."  And  it  is 
puzzled  and  dismayed,  and  finally  frightened  off, 
by  the  fact  that  everything  means  something  else. 
Furthermore,  the  details  both  of  Indian  life  and 
of  Indian  belief  are  so  chosen  and  sifted  and 
beautified  as  to  be  most  misleading,  if  we  are 
emphasizing  that  side  of  the  poem.  Lastly, 
it  is  not  good  for  the  young  children  to  have  a 
long-continued  and  constantly  renewed  experi- 
ence in  the  alien  and  wearing  meter,  and  the 
unmusical  rhythm  of  Hiawatha;  and  the  verse- 
form  dictates  certain  trying  peculiarities  of  style, 
in  especial  the  slightly  varied  iteration  of  detail : 

Ah,  my  brother  from  the  North  land, 
From  the  kingdom  of  Wabasso, 
From  the  land  of  the  White  Rabbit, 
You  have  stolen  the  maiden  from  me, 
You  have  laid  your  hand  upon  her, 
You   have   wooed   and   won   my    maiden. 


2io    Literature  in  the  Elementary  School 

This  redundancy  and  repetition  do  not  constitute 
the  direct,  forward-moving  style  we  should  like 
to  impress  on  the  children.  All  these  considera- 
tions are  offered  to  justify  the  judgment,  held 
in  great  modesty,  that  Hiawatlia  should  not  be 
given  in  its  entirety  nor  should  the  children  be 
kept  at  it  for  any  long  drill,  but,  if  at  all,  in 
chosen  episodes  and  from  time  to  time. 

Of  course,  any  teacher  may  see  fit  to  draw  out 
from  Hiawatha  the  story  of  any  episode  and  treat 
it  as  a  story,  for  dramatization,  or  as  illuminat- 
ing some  phase  of  the  children's  interest  and 
activity.  And  students  old  enough  to  interpret 
the  mythical  meaning  of  the  poem  may  profitably 
read  it. 

Occasionally,  and  as  something  apart  from 
their  regular  lessons,  the  children  should  hear 
beautifully  read  passages  of  the  incomparable 
music  of  some  of  the  great  masters,  regardless  of 
their  understanding  of  the  content — the  first  six- 
teen lines  of  Paradise  Lost;  some  especially 
musical  sonnet  of  Shakespeare's,  or  some  passage 
of  lofty  eloquence  from  the  plays;  some  vague 
and  haunting  bit  of  music  from  Shelley,  or  Poe, 
or  Keats;  some  fanfare  of  trumpets  from  Byron, 
or  Macaulay,  or  Kipling. 

Every  teacher  will  realize  that  all  the  titles  and 
authors  and  kinds  mentioned  in  this  study  can- 


Poetry  211 

not  be  put  into  the  children's  lessons.  It  is  to  be 
hoped  that  he  will  realize  that  they  are  men- 
tioned as  concrete  examples,  or  suggestive  in- 
stances of  things  that  are  good,  and  to  support 
the  principles  under  discussion. 

The  distinctive  service  of  poetry  will  be  the    ' 
cultivation  of  the  children's  sense  of  the  musical 
side  of  literature;  the  opportunity  for  appreciat-  .  ^ 
ing  some  of  the  minor  beauties  of  the  literary  art ; 
and  among  the  older  children,  acquaintance  with 
the  more  highly  imaginative  method,   and   the 
more  intensely  emotional  moods. 


MANUAL  AKTS  AND  H-.;i,£  ECONOMM 
SANTA  BA»BAP;,CU!FORN»A 


CHAPTER  XIII 

DRAMA 

There  are  many  of  the  elements  of  drama  that 
are  eminently  serviceable  in  the  child's  literary 
and  artistic  training.  One  cannot  use  the  word 
"elements"  in  this  connection  without  explaining 
that  the  word  as  used  here  does  not  designate 
absolutely  simple  and  primitive  things.  They  are 
elements  only  with  respect  to  the  complex  whole 
which  we  call  a  drama.  The  elements  of  drama 
are  story,  plot,  character,  impersonation,  dialogue, 
gesture,  stage  requirements ;  add  to  these  the  mat- 
ter of  literary  expression,  a  pronounced  structure 
which  divides  the  production  into  clearly  dis- 
tinguished parts  or  acts;  and  add  the  further 
fact  that  in  all  its  developed  and  typical  speci- 
mens drama  is  the  expression  and  presentation 
of  a  complex  social  situation,  or  the  vehicle  of  a 
mature  philosophy.  It  is  quite  evident,  then,  that 
the  fully  constituted  literary  drama  will  be  both 
too  complex  and  two  difficult  for  children  under 
twelve,  and  in  most  communities  for  any  ele- 
mentary children. 

But  the  elements  of  drama  are  not  of  necessity 
always  in  the  difficult  and  elaborate  combination 


Drama  213 

which  constitutes  a  literary  drama.  They  appear 
singly  and  in  simpler  combinations  here  and 
there  in  many  of  the  experiences  and  occupations 
of  the  child.  They  may  be  selected  and  combined 
for  him  in  such  products  as  will  secure  for  him 
the  distinctive  joys  and  discipline  of  the  drama. 

For  example,  there  is  the  element  of  gesture, 
which  in  its  elaborated  form  becomes  techni- 
cal acting.  In  its  primitive  and  fundamental  form 
it  is  instinctive  with  children — well-nigh  purpose- 
less at  first,  uncontrolled  and  fantastic  like  the 
early  activities  of  their  imagination,  but  easily 
organized  and  directed  toward  a  purpose.  The 
first  step  in  this  direction  is  the  game.  Some  of 
the  charming  group-games  the  children  learn 
even  in  the  kindergarten  are  genuine  dra- 
matic art.  Such  games  are,  at  any  rate,  the  first 
opportunity  to  channel  and  to  turn  into  something 
like  artistic  expression  the  children's  ceaseless 
activity. 

We  have  all  learned  to  appreciate  the  social 
and  physical  value  of  play.  We  may  well  add 
now  a  respectful  estimate  of  games  as  art.  The 
group-game  may  seem  at  first  glance  far  from 
the  child's  literary  training;  but,  as  a  matter  of 
fact,  a  good  game  which  has  in  it,  as  a  good  game 
always  has,  an  orderly  process  and  a  climax,  is 
just  such  an  artistic  whole  as  a  story.  Besides, 


214     Literature  in  the  Elementary  ScJwol 

many  of  our  best  group-games  are  accompanied 
by  a  rhythmic  chant,  often  by  pretty  or  quaint 
verses,  such  as  "Itisket,  itasket,  a  green  and 
yellow  basket;"  or,  "How  many  miles  to  Baby- 
lon?" or  "London  bridge  is  falling  down."  Act- 
ing upon  this  hint,  we  may  substitute  for  these 
verses  more  artistic  lines,  or  we  can  furnish  more 
artistic  lines  with  the  fitting  game.  And  these 
activities,  channeled  and  disciplined  by  the  group- 
game,  are  receiving  the  best  possible  training  for 
dramatic  acting  by  and  by. 

We  must  consider  dancing  as  a  form  of  dra- 
matic gesture,  and  as  a  training  for  it.  We  may 
all  rejoice  in  the  current  change  of  attitude 
toward  dancing,  which  bids  fair  to  replace  it  in 
education  and  among  the  arts.  We  are  learning 
again  to  regard  it  as  such  a  controlling  and 
refining  of  motion  as  makes  an  appeal  to  one's 
sense  of  beauty,  not  as  the  vulgar,  one  might 
almost  say  sordid,  accomplishment  it  has  been 
in  average  society  for  many  generations.  The 
rediscovery  of  the  charming  and  simple  folk- 
dances  has  given  us  a  new  art  for  the  chil- 
dren, which  we  may  substitute  for  the  un- 
natural waltz,  and  the  mongrel  two-step  we  have 
been  teaching  them  for  years.  A  dance  is  a 
medium  for  expressing  a  mood,  and  a  means  of 
communicating  it;  like  the  games,  it  is  a  method 


Drama  215 

of  channeling  and  training  activity.  From  this 
point  of  view  one  may  see  its  two-fold  relation: 
on  the  one  hand,  to  the  child's  natural  activities, 
taking  them  up,  selecting  among  them,  and  com- 
bining them  into  a  beautiful  whole;  on  the  other 
hand  to  dramatic  acting,  training  and  controlling 
the  physical  movements  of  gesture  and  pose  and 
poise.  Ideally  it  may  have  a  closer  connection 
with  literature.  Not  only  may  dancing  reflect  a 
mood;  it  may  tell  a  story  or  present  a  situation; 
many  primitive  dances  were  of  this  kind.  In  a 
previous  chapter  I  have  spoken  of  dancing  as  a 
method  of  motion  to  accompany  spoken  verse,  as 
a  means  of  deepening  the  sense  of  rhythm.  It  is 
possible  to  represent  in  this  way,  not  only  the 
movement  of  the  words,  but  the  mood  of  the  lyric, 
and,  mutatis  mutandis,  the  events  of  the  ballad. 
I  have  seen  the  fourth-year  class  present  a  little 
dance  of  "Hickory  dickory  dock"  invented  for 
them  by  their  teacher,  and  another  class  a  little 
older  do  a  humorous  dance  of  "There  was  a  man 
in  our  town,"  than  which  two  performances 
nothing  could  be  more  charming.  Of  course,  these 
were  not  in  any  sense  reproductions  of  the  actions 
suggested  by  the  jingles;  there  was  no  gesture 
that  told  of  running  up  the  clock,  or  scratching 
out  his  «yes ;  that  would  be  the  business  of  the  old 
gesticulating  elocution  so  deplorable  in  the  arti- 


2i6    Literature  in  the  Elementary  School 

ficiality  of  its  would-be  realism.  The  dances  were 
felt  to  be  merely  the  active  response  to  the  rhythm 
and  the  mood  of  the  recited  words — bits  of  dra- 
matic tone-color,  as  it  were. 

One  wonders  why  all  teachers  do  not  make  a 
game  of  "Charades"  a  frequent  class  recreation 
and  discipline,  since  it  has  in  it  so  many  elements 
of  educational  value — the  contributions  to  the 
children's  vocabulary,  the  sugar-coated  persuasion 
to  attend  to  spelling,  the  frequent  need  for  the 
invention  of  dialogue,  the  sharpening  of  every- 
body's wits,  and,  best  of  all,  the  call  for  signifi- 
cant pantomime,  genuine  dramatic  gesture,  and 
the  fun,  which  is  always  educative. 

When  we  come  to  the  element  of  impersona- 
tion, we  are  nearer  the  heart  of  dramatic  art,  and 
perhaps  deeper  into  the  circle  of  the  child's  inter- 
ests and  instincts  as  well.  Imitation  is  one  of  the 
absolute  and  fundamental  aspects  of  a  child's 
activities.  It  is  impossible  to  escape  calling  it  an 
instinct,  when  one  sees  that  it  is  deeper  and  more 
universal  than  any  impulse  or  tendency.  The  in- 
terpretation put  by  more  recent  psychologists  upon 
the  term  and  the  fact  of  imitation  throws  a  new 
and  grateful  light  upon  it  as  a  principle  in  drama. 
In  the  light  of  this  interpretation,  we  can  not 
longer  think  of  imitation  as  a  servile,  and  more  or 
less  formal,  copying  of  the  thing  seen.  We  are 


Drama  217 

now  saying  that  in  these  activities  of  the  children, 
when  they  are  playing  house,  or  playing  hunter, 
or  playing  soldier,  they  are  not  copying  some- 
thing they  have  seen  or  heard  of ;  they  are  keeping 
house,  they  are  hunting,  they  are  marching  and 
fighting.  Not  even  bodily  activity  is  a  more 
incessant  and  absolute  aspect  of  play  than  this  of 
make-believe.  Imaginative  children,  and  those 
that  have  some  variety  of  experience,  are  rarely 
at  leisure  to  appear  in  their  own  characters — so 
constant  is  the  dramatic  and  imitative  impulse  in 
exercise.  Indeed,  two  little  girls  I  knew,  after  a 
forenoon  of  unceasing  and  strenuous  impersona- 
tion of  a  repertoire  ranging  from  a  door-mat  and 
a  cake  of  ice  in  the  Delaware  on  through  the  ghost 
of  the  murdered  Banquo,  were  finally  obliged  to 
sit  down  in  utter  weariness,  when  one  of  them 
suggested:  "Now  let's  play  we're  just  plain  little 
girls."  In  the  same  nursery  of  four  children  the 
child  who  returned  to  the  room  after  any  absence 
always  cautiously  inquired  of  each  of  the 
others,  before  taking  up  affairs :  "What  are  you 
being  now  ?" 

In  certain  hours  of  his  study  of  literature  and 
literary  appreciation  one  is  ready  to  believe  that 
this  impulse  toward  impersonation  is  the  very 
fundamental  fact  in  that  appreciation.  It  is  the 
door  through  which  one  enters  into  the  situations 


218    Literature  in  the  Elementary  School 

and  feelings  which  make  up  the  life  represented 
in  the  story,  poem,  or  drama.  This  it  is  that  gives 
that  strange  grip  of  reality  to  literature;  it  is 
this  that  turns  the  appreciation  of  literature  into 
personal  culture,  so  that  in  a  very  real  sense  one 
may  substitute  literature  for  experience.  It  is 
easy  to  utilize  this  passion  very  early,  turning  it  in 
the  direction  of  art.  In  the  kindergarten  they 
have  long  known  how  to  adapt  it  in  the  play 
which  they  so  wisely  interchange  and  amalga- 
mate with  their  games ;  and  the  little  pantomimes 
of  "Bo-peep"  and  "Little  Boy  Blue,"  of  flocks 
of  birds,  of  butterflies  on  the  wing,  and  what  not, 
are  on  the  road  to  true  dramatic  art.  But,  alas! 
this  is  cut  all  too  short  in  the  school — the  average 
school,  where  the  scholars  are  converted  immedi- 
ately into  the  veriest  little  pitchers — all  ears ;  and, 
instead  of  being  twenty  selves  in  a  day,  they  are 
denied  the  privilege  of  being  even  one  whole  one. 
This  gift  for  impersonation  should,  like  all  their 
imaginative  experiences,  be  conserved  by  exercise 
and  guidance ;  otherwise  it  remains  merely  chaotic 
and  accidental,  and  very  soon  the  child  himself  is 
ashamed  of  it  and  regards  its  exercise  as  a  "baby" 
performance  to  be  left  behind  in  the  kindergarten. 
This  exercise  and  guidance  may  be  given  by  train- 
ing the  children  in  little  plays,  which,  to  begin 
with,  are  not  much  more  than  pantomime,  but 


Drama  219 

which  add,  as  they  go  on,  other  elements  of  the 
real  drama — an  organized  action  and  dialogue. 

Of  course,  there  is  the  dramatic  monologue — 
the  recitation.  But  this  does  not  meet  the  need? 
of  the  class.  It  is  impossible  that  all  the  children 
should  sympathetically  impersonate  the  same 
character  and  realize  the  same  experience.  Neither 
does  this  sort  of  exercise — the  recitation — give  a 
chance  for  co-operation  in  the  production  of  a  bit 
of  social  art;  it  does  not  give  them  the  discipline 
of  apprehending  and  producing  a  large  whole,  and 
it  tends  to  develop  and  foster  an  unendurable  kind 
and  degree  of  egoism. 

Where  are  we  to  get  these  plays,  since  there 
are  practically  none  of  respectable  literary  quality 
ready  to  our  hand?  One  must  say  "practically 
none,"  because  there  are  a  few  in  print  which  can 
be  used,  chiefly  dramatizations  of  folk-  and  fairy- 
tales. But,  for  the  most  part,  and  just  as  it  should 
be,  the  teacher  and  the  class  will  have  to  make 
their  own  plays,  until  in  the  eighth  grade  or  there- 
abouts they  are  ready  for  some  literary  drama. 
As  will  be  pointed  out  later,  these  co-operatively 
produced  dramas  constitute  the  best  possible 
return  which  the  children  can  make  of  their  liter- 
ary training,  and  at  the  same  time  the  best  pos- 
sible means  of  securing  their  apprehension  of  the 
story  they  use;  since  in  recasting  a  story  as  a  play 


22o    Literature  in  the  Elementary  School 

they  will  come  to  know  it  as  plot,  as  activity  of 
persons,  and  as  a  structure  made  up  of  essential 
parts. 

Almost  the  first  thing  the  child  sees  is  the  fact 
that  there  is  something  organic  and  necessary 
about  these  divisions  and  subdivisions.  He  sees 
them  separate  themselves  out  from  the  narrative 
as  things  in  themselves,  and  then  reunite  to  form  a 
complete  whole  again.  It  matters  not  whether 
the  story  be  one  that  he  has  been  taught,  a  his- 
torical episode,  or  a  story  invented  by  himself, 
the  emphasis  upon  structure,  upon  organization, 
which  is  one  of  the  elements  of  drama,  will  be 
helpful,  as  a  matter  of  literary  training. 

As  to  the  dialogue — the  actual  literature  of  this 
communal  drama — we  must  be  most  indulgent, 
and  on  the  whole  uncritical.  A  marked  peculiar- 
ity of  the  dramatizations  of  the  little  people,  as 
indeed  of  those  of  their  elders,  is  that  they  for- 
get to  be  literature  at  all,  so  that  what  is  not 
dumb-show  must  be  set  down  as  noise.  It  is  a 
troublesome  and  delicate  task  for  the  teacher  who 
is  guiding  them  to  manage  to  give  the  dialogue  a 
tone  better  than  mere  commonplace  and  different 
from  mere  bombast.  It  is  wisest,  on  the  whole, 
to  get  them  to  choose  stories  and  events  that  will 
sway  their  dialogue  toward  the  bombastic  and 
away  from  the  commonplace;  they  will  certainly 


Drama  221 

be  more  spontaneous,  and  probably  more  artistic. 
And  it  is  easy  to  set  into  every  play  some  genuine 
gem  of  literature — a  lyric  to  be  sung,  a  little  story 
to  be  told.  It  is  desirable  to  introduce  as  much 
music  as  possible — really  artistic  little  songs  that 
fit  into  the  atmosphere  of  the  play  and  help  to 
create  it;  it  makes  better  "team-work."  A  dance 
too,  always  provided  it  harmonizes  with  the  tone 
and  spirit  of  the  play,  helps  the  feeling  of  co- 
operative production.  The  children's  acting,  in 
the  sense  of  gesture  and  stage-business,  is  very 
likely  to  be  stiff  and  artificial.  Marches  and 
dances  that  belong  in  the  play  make  an  imperative 
call  for  movement,  and  accustom  them  to  action 
without  self-consciousness  and  formality. 

The  story,  then,  is  generally  given — it  is  some- 
thing the  children  have  read,  it  is  a  historical 
event,  though  of  course  it  may  be  furnished  by 
some  inventive  member  of  the  class,  or  evolved 
by  them  together.  Whatever  it  is,  it  will  in  all 
probability  not  differ  in  any  way  from  the  story 
of  any  narrative.  The  plot  will  be  the  plot  of  the 
narrative  story;  it  will  be  either  an  accident  or  a 
very  noteworthy  fact,  if  the  material  furnished 
displays  a  true  dramatic  plot.  There  will  proba- 
bly be  no  true  dramatic  characterization.  The 
teacher  cannot  aim  at  it,  and  must  not  expect  it; 
though  occasionally  the  born  actor  declares  him- 


222     Literature  in  the  Elementary  School 

self  and  presents  us  "a  man  in  his  humor"  in 
true  dramatic  fashion.  But,  on  the  whole,  we 
are  contented  if  up  to  the  time  we  are  twelve  or 
thirteen  we  move  about  the  stage,  as  the  per- 
sons move  through  the  story,  delivering  ourselves 
of  such  dialogue  as  is  needed  to  put  the  action 
forward — and  nothing  more.  It  goes  without 
saying  that  place  must  be  made  for  a  large  num- 
ber of  "supis."  An  army  is  a  great  device,  for  in 
the  marching  and  maneuvering  most  of  the  class 
can  manage  to  appear  upon  the  stage  first  or 
last  Briar-Rose  makes  a  great  play  for  the 
third  or  fourth  grade,  for  every  man  in  the 
grade  can  appear  as  a  thorn-bush  in  the  hedge. 
There  may  easily  be  two  different  casts  for  every 
play.  Occasionally  there  is  the  opportunity  for 
the  whole  class  to  appear  in  character  as  audi- 
ence. 

It  is  almost  impossible  to  say  anything  concern- 
ing the  staging,  the  theatrical  side,  of  these  plays 
that  will  be  helpful  everywhere  because  the  facili- 
ties vary  so  widely  in  different  schools  and  differ- 
ent communities.  In  general,  it  is  best  to  have 
what  answers  for  a  stage.  There  is  some  mystic 
influence  in  the  raised  platform,  the  curtain,  the 
proscenium  arch  that  cuts  off  this  performance 
from  the  rest  of  the  world  and  gives  it  at  once 
the  distinction  of  art  Every  dramatic  guide  of 


Drama  223 

young  people  should  help  forward  as  much  as 
possible  the  movement  to  free  drama  from  the 
tyranny  of  the  stage  carpenter,  the  scene-painter, 
and  the  costumer.  And  with  children  as  with  the 
early  folk-players  it  takes  very  little  to  create  the 
illusion.  A  feather  in  his  head  makes  the  six- 
year-old  a  noble  red  man  without  more  ado.  A 
sash  over  her  shoulder  converts  a  little  maiden 
of  the  third  grade  into  a  haughty  princess.  But 
the  feather  and  the  sash  are  good  pedagogy  as 
well  as  good  art.  An  arm-chair  makes  a  parlor;  a 
half-dozen  arm-loads  of  boughs  makes  a  forest. 
I  witnessed  a  stirring  performance  of  Siegfried, 
the  Child  of  the  Forest,  where  the  illusion  of  the 
deep-forest  glades  was  created  by  three  rubber 
plants,  a  potted  palm,  and  a  sword- fern  in  a 
jardiniere!  A  golden-haired  Siegfried  with  an 
angora  rug  thrown  over  one  shoulder,  a  black- 
ened Mimi  with  a  mantle  of  burlap  fastened  about 
him  with  a  trunk-strap — the  whole  atmosphere 
of  art  was  there. 

As  the  children  grow  older,  and  alas!  in  most 
cases  less  imaginative,  they  will  require  more 
properties.  If  possible,  they  should  work  together 
to  make  the  scenery  and  provide  the  properties, 
and  should  be  prevailed  upon  to  make  their  own 
costumes.  The  wise  teacher  will  keep  the  costum- 


224    Literature  in  the  Elementary  School 

ing  out  of  the  hands  of  the  "tender  mamas"  all  he 
can;  for  in  most  cases  the  participation  of  the 
mothers  in  this  side  of  the  preparations,  unless 
they  are  given  specific  directions  and  compelled  to 
follow  them,  means  the  introduction  of  the  fatal 
spirit  of  competitive  finery.  The  children  should 
be  taught  to  see  that  the  costuming  is  a  part  of 
the  art,  and  that  everybody's  costume  must  be 
brought  "within  the  picture." 

Now,  up  through  the  sixth  or  seventh  grades 
(this  will  depend  upon  the  average  maturity  of 
the  children,  upon  the  kind  of  culture  in  the 
homes  from  which  they  come,  upon  the  character 
and  knowledge  of  the  teachers  in  the  grades 
through  which  they  have  come)  the  plays  that  the 
children  have  should  be  of  the  kind  we  have  been 
considering — epic  material,  mere  direct  story  put 
together  under  the  simplest  of  dramatic  princi- 
ples— those  of  analysis  into  movements,  of  dia- 
logue and  of  action  in  its  simpler  forms.  But  in 
the  eighth  school  year  (merely  to  set  a  limit),  and 
bridging  the  children  over  into  their  ninth 
or  first  year  of  high  school,  there  may  be  a 
change.  The  child  has  gradually  become  con- 
scious of  the  complexity  of  life  and  human  inter- 
ests; he  begins  to  make  his  adolescent  readjust- 
ment to  the  world,  to  realize  in  a  conscious  way 
its  history  and  its  institutions;  his  own  studies 


Drama  225 

in  history  have  become  studies  in  the  interweaving 
of  complex  factors;  the  great  social  institutions 
begin  to  press  their  claims  and  offer  their  attrac- 
tions; college  looms  ahead,  conditioning  all  his 
undertakings;  the  church  makes  its  appeal  or 
asserts  its  rights;  upon  all  too  many  children  the 
institutions  of  business  and  industry  make  their 
call;  in  most  children  their  own  moral  and  reli- 
gious problems,  and  those  of  their  mates,  rise  to 
consciousness.  Epic  directness  and  singleness 
now  no  longer  seem  an  adequate  picture  of  human 
affairs.  It  is  now  that  the  child  has  his  first  mo- 
ment of  ripeness  for  the  characteristic  inner  things 
of  the  literary  drama :  the  clash  and  combination 
of  institutions ;  the  revolt  of  the  individual  against 
the  institution,  with  his  final  destruction  or  adjust- 
ment ;  the  plot  which  is  an  interweaving  of  ethical 
and  complex  social  forces — the  characters  gener- 
ally intricate  to  begin  with,  and  undergoing  pro- 
found modification  in  the  process  of  the  action, 
different  from  the  static  epic  characters  he  has 
known  hitherto.  In  short,  we  may  find  that  the 
eighth  grade  is  ready  for  some  specimens  of  that 
literary  type  which  is  the  truest  artistic  presenta- 
tion of  the  social  and  moral  complex,  the  literary 
drama.  Luckily,  there  are  grades  and  shades  of 
complexity,  and  a  wide  range  of  choice  as  to  the 
nature  and  difficulty  of  the  problems  involved. 


226    Literature  in  the  Elementary  School 

One  would  scarcely  encourage  the  eighth-  or 
ninth-year  school  children  to  attack  the  intricate 
adjustment  and  interplay  of  Hamlet;  he  would 
not  like  them  to  follow  the  baffling  complexities 
of  social,  personal,  and  economic  considerations 
through  The  Pillars  of  Society.  But  The  Mer- 
chant of  Venice  offers  problems  and  situations 
which  he  can  understand;  in  Julius  Caesar  and 
in  Macbeth,  in  Wilhelm  Tell,  and  in  the  Wallen- 
stein  plays,  noble  and  finished  dramas  as  they  are, 
he  encounters  nothing  that  he  cannot  grasp.  On 
the  contrary,  the  ideas  and  the  situations  are  such 
as  he  readily  understands,  and  such  as  legitimately 
enlarge  his  horizon.  The  Shakespeare,  at  any 
rate,  will  probably  be  studied  as  poetry,  and  the 
children  should  be  encouraged  to  act,  in  whole  or 
in  part,  any  play  that  they  can  study  as  literature. 
It  may  be  that  the  facilities  of  the  school  will 
prohibit  any  attempt  to  stage  one  of  these  larger 
plays.  In  that  event  chosen  bits  may  be  given  as 
dialogue  or  monologue  fitted  into  a  recital  of  the 
story,  and  a  description  of  the  situation.  The 
teacher  should  always  remember  that  the  drama 
is  oral  literature,  and  the  literature  of  it  makes 
its  legitimate  appeal  first  to  the  ear.  Children 
memorize  so  easily,  that  they  will  know  the  play 
by  heart  practically  as  soon  as  they  have  finished 
such  a  consideration  of  it  as  enables  them  to  read 


Drama  227 

it  intelligently.  If  not,  the  striking  and  beauti- 
ful passages  should  be  deliberately  memorized. 

Should  these  dramatic  performances  be  pro- 
duced before  a  public?  Most  certainly  yes.  Let 
it  be  however  small  a  public — two  neighboring 
grades,  invited  parents  and  friends;  but  let  the 
study  and  effort  bear  its  legitimate  fruit  in  the 
public  presentation.  Only  when  we  lead  them  to 
turn  back  what  they  have  gained  into  a  com- 
munity asset,  have  we  done  anything  to  train  our 
children  in  social  art.  And  this  is  so  natural  and 
easy  in  the  case  of  an  acted  drama  that  it  is  a  pity 
to  miss  the  opportunity.  Of  course,  they  must 
love  the  thing  they  do.  It  must  be  made  good 
enough  to  give,  and  be  therefore  offered.  We 
shall  gradually  recover  from  the  fright  we  have 
been  in  now  for  some  time  as  to  the  children's 
desire  to  "show  off."  How  can  we  be  sure  we 
should  have  had  any  art,  if  this  motive  had  not 
mingled  with  the  others  in  the  production  and 
publication  of  the  art-product?  Let  us  cease  to 
give  it  an  invidious  name;  instead  of  calling  it 
the  desire  to  "show  off,"  let  us  call  it  the  artist's 
passion — be  he  poet,  painter,  actor,  what  not — to 
communicate,  to  turn  back  into  the  common  life 
this  thing  he  has  but  drawn  out  of  the  common 
life  to  elaborate  and  beautify. 

The  child  and  the  theater  makes  a  difficult 


228    Literature  in  the  Elementary  School 

problem.  One  need  not  say  that  a  habitual 
theater-going  child  is  a  social,  and  most  likely  a 
moral,  monster.  But  children  should  occasionally 
see  a  play  with  the  pomp  and  circumstance  of  the 
stage.  In  the  large  cities  it  is  not  difficult  to  find 
a  play  or  two  each  year  that  it  is  good  for  a  child 
to  see — something  of  Shakespeare,  or  some  other 
heroic  spectacle;  some  innocent  programme  of 
horse-play  and  frolic;  some  pretty  pantomime, 
and  occasionally  a  melodrama  neither  banal  nor 
over-sentimental.  If  we  but  realized  the  theater 
as  an  educational  and  aesthetic  force,  we  might 
secure  many  more  such  things  by  an  intelligent 
appeal  for  them  and  an  intelligent  reception  of 
them. 

After  the  children  have  had  these  few  heroic 
plays  we  have  discussd  for  the  eighth  or  ninth 
grade,  they  mature  so  rapidly  that  their  contact 
with  the  literary  drama  ceases  to  be  a  child's 
problem  at  all ;  it  passes  into  the  field  of  second- 
ary training,  where  it  must,  as  things  now  are  in 
our  schools,  be  approached  from  a  somewhat 
different  point  of  view. 


CHAPTER  XIV 

THE   PRESENTATION   OF  THE   LITERATURE 

In  this  day  of  reaction,  not  to  say  revulsion, 
against  "methods"  in  teaching,  it  is  with  much 
misgiving  that  one  brings  one's  self  to  speak  of 
the  practical  details  of  teaching  a  subject,  lest  he 
be  suspected  of  having  a  method  or  even  a  sys- 
tem, or  lest  those  suggestions  which  he  tries  to 
give  out  as  genetic  and  stimulating  merely,  be 
taken  as  a  formalized  plan.  However,  each  body 
of  material  that  has  any  degree  of  separateness 
has  a  handle  by  which  it  ought  to  be  taken;  dis- 
regarding the  poor  figure — paths  by  which  one 
most  easily  comes  to  the  center  of  it;  certain 
points  of  view  from  which  it  looks  most  attractive 
and  manageable.  Some  such  handles,  or  paths, 
or  points  of  view  it  will  be  the  business  of  this 
chapter  to  indicate;  and  the  suggestions  to  be 
offered  are,  it  is  to  be  hoped,  so  simple  and  so 
reasonable  as  to  have  occurred  to  many  observing 
and  growing  teachers. 

The  somewhat  small  body  of  literature  to  be 

used  in  the  classes  should  practically  throughout 

the  elementary  period  be  read  to  the  children  in 

class,  not  read  by  them.  The  relation  of  the  litera- 

329 


230    Literature  in  the  Elementary  School 

ture  to  reading-lessons  will  be  discussed  elsewhere. 
It  may  well  be  that  in  the  last  years  of  the  period 
many  of  the  members  of  the  class  will  have 
reached  the  stage  of  reading  needful  for  the  inter- 
pretative and  apprehensive  reading  of  literature; 
but  the  majority  of  the  class  will  not.  They  will 
master  the  difficulties  of  mechanical  reading ;  they 
may  achieve  the  plane  of  intelligent  reading.  But 
here  the  large  majority  of  them  linger.  Vast 
numbers  of  people  never  push  on  to  the  next  plane 
— that  of  appreciative  reading.  And  it  is  small 
wonder ;  for  the  combination  of  mechanical,  intel- 
lectual, and  emotional  processes  that  it  involves 
constitutes  it  well-nigh  the  most  difficult  of 
achievements.  Hosts  of  estimable  and  intelligent 
persons,  respectable  citizens,  live  out  long  years  of 
greater  or  less  usefulness,  and  never  have  a 
glimpse  of  this  kind  of  reading.  It  is  by  no  means 
true  that  even  every  good  and  useful  citizen  who 
teaches  literature,  can  do  this  kind  of  reading; 
many  times  he  cannot.  But  he  can  read  better 
than  the  children.  They,  involved  in  the  difficul- 
ties of  their  inexpert  reading,  cannot  see  the 
woods 'for  the  trees;  they  are  obliged  to  go  so 
slowly,  and  to  absorb  so  much  energy  in  what  one 
may  call  the  manual  work  of  reading,  that  they 
miss  the  essentially  literary  things — the  move- 
ment, the  picture,  the  music. 


Presentation  o]  the  Literature          231 

Of  course,  when  we  say  "read,"  we  use  the 
word  in  the  broad  sense  of  rendering  the  matter 
viva  voce,  whether  it  be  actual  reading  from  the 
text  or  reciting.  While  the  person  who  is  reading 
a  story  to  children  must  be  most  concerned  with 
spirit  and  meaning,  he  must  not,  if  he  suppose 
himself  to  be  teaching  literature,  neglect  the  mat- 
ter of  style.  If  the  story  is  a  translated  one,  he 
must  make  or  choose  some  beautiful  translation. 
Everything  that  he  reads  to  them  he  must  work 
over  beforehand,  so  that  he  can  give  it  with 
effective  certainty.  He  more  than  defeats  his 
purpose  who  transmits  to  his  children  no  matter 
how  good  a  story  in  slip-shod  sentences,  common- 
place phrasing,  go-easy  enunciation;  or,  worse 
than  that,  in  the  ostentatiously  childlike  language 
and  manner  that  constitute  official  kinder- 
gartenese,  or  in  the  hilariously  cheerful  manner 
which  marks  traditional  Sunday-schoolese ;  or, 
worst  of  all,  in  that  tone  of  cheap  irony  that  so 
many  people  see  fit  to  adopt  for  all  their  com- 
munications with  children.  It  is  the  tone  of  the 
average  adult  whenever  he  enters  into  conversa- 
tion with  any  acquaintance  under  twelve — an 
underbred  or  quite  uncalled-for  tone  of  badinage, 
of  quizzing,  of  insincerity.  It  is  an  unpardonable 
misunderstanding  of  the  dignity  and  seriousness 
of  children  to  offer  them  babble  when  they  ask 


232     Literature  in  the  Elementary  School 

only  simplicity,  or  to  treat  with  flippancy  what  to 
them  are  the  serious  things  of  art.  It  should  be 
quite  possible  to  be  serious  without  being  solemn, 
and  cheerful  without  being  hilarious.  This  matter 
of  a  good  style  and  form  is  so  important  that  a 
teacher  should  achieve  it  at  any  cost  of  trouble 
and  study.  I  like  to  use  every  opportunity  to  say 
that  he  should  so  thoroughly  know  his  story  or 
poem,  be  it  the  simplest  old  fairy-tale,  or  the 
veriest  nursery- jingle,  that  he  loves  and  respects 
it  as  art;  and  should  so  know  and  respect  his 
audience  and  his  purpose  that  a  good  and  suitable 
literary  form  flows  from  him  inevitably;  or,  if 
he  is  reading  an  actual  text,  that  every  sentence 
is  both  appreciative  and  interpretative.  But,  if 
he  cannot  achieve  this,  let  him  in  the  first  instance 
write  out  a  good  form  of  his  story,  or  find  one 
and  memorize  it.  There  is  no  denying  that  in  the 
hands  of  a  cold  and  mechanical  person  this  pro- 
duction will  display  some  priggishness  and  false 
propriety.  But  the  failure  as  literary  training 
would  be  less  disastrous  in  this  case  than  if  the 
same  person  gave  a  haphazard  and  commonplace 
impromptu  version. 

There  is  such  a  thing  as  literary  reading  as 
distinguished  from  the  reading  of  matter  techni- 
cal in  content  and  merely  intellectual  in  appeal. 
Teachers,  accustomed  as  they  are  to  read  for  facts 


Presentation  of  the  Literature          233 

and  intent  upon  the  logical  emphasis,  are  peculi- 
arly prone  to  read  literature  poorly — missing  the 
music  and  the  emotion,  rendering  it  all  in  the  hard 
intellectual  manner  that  is  acceptable  only  as  the 
vehicle  of  the  colorless  matter  of  a  technical 
treatise.  There  is  also  such  a  thing  as  the  telling 
of  a  literary  story,  as  distinguished  from  the  tell- 
ing of  any  other  story.  A  narrative  of  events  in 
history,  an  account  of  some  occurrence  in  nature 
or  ordinary  affairs,  may  be  expected  to  proceed 
from  point  to  point  without  arrangement  or  suc- 
cession other  than  the  order  of  incidents  as  they 
occur.  The  interest  is  the  interest  of  fact;  the 
thread  is  that  of  cause  and  effect,  or  any  other 
plain  sequence. 

But  in  the  literary  story  the  incidents  are  sifted 
and  arranged.  Certain  details  are  prophecies — 
foreshadowings  of  things  to  corne;  certain  inci- 
dents are  vital  turning-points  in  the  action;  cer- 
tain phrases  are  the  key  and  counter-sign  of  the 
whole  story ;  some  paragraphs  are  plain  narration ; 
some  are  calm  description ;  some  are  poetic  inter- 
pretation ;  some  roar  with  action ;  some  glow  with 
emotion;  some  sparkle  with  fun;  some  He  in 
shadow,  others  stand  forth  in  the  brilliant  light; 
there  are  movements  in  the  story,  marked  by  a 
change  of  scene,  a  change  of  situation,  a  pause 
in  the  action — parts  which  would  be  marked 


234    Literature  in  the  Elementary  School 

in  the  drama  as  scenes  or  acts;  there  is  the 
gradual  approach  to  the  center,  the  pivotal 
occurrence,  the  readjustment  of  affairs  to  ordi- 
nary life.  Ideally,  all  these  things  will  be  indi- 
cated in  the  presentation  that  an  accomplished 
story-teller  makes  of  a  literary  story.  This 
seems  to  set  the  standard  very  high — too 
high  for  the  discouraged  attempt  of  the  over- 
worked grade  teacher.  If  so,  she  may  reflect 
that  it  is  triumphantly  true  that  such  is  the  affinity 
between  the  child  and  the  story  that  he  will  get 
much  delight  and  nourishment  out  of  any  telling 
of  it.  Who  has  not  hesitated  between  a  smile  and 
a  tear  at  the  spectacle  of  a  child  or  a  class 
hanging  enthralled  and  hungry  upon  a  story  ren- 
dered by  a  mother  or  a  teacher  whose  every  pro- 
nunciation was  a  jar,  whose  every  cadence  a  dis- 
location, and  whose  every  emphasis  a  misinterpre- 
tation ? 

And  remember,  the  art  of  story-telling  is  not 
the  art  of  the  theater,  not  the  art  of  the  actress, 
but  the  art  of  the  mother,  the  nurse;  the  art  of 
the  "spinsters  and  the  knitters  in  the  sun ;"  the  art 
of  the  wandering  minstrel,  of  the  journeyman 
tailor,  of  the  exiled  younger  brother;  art  de- 
signed to  reach,  not  an  audience  beyond  the  foot- 
lights, but  one  gathered  on  the  sunny  bench  of 
the  market-place,  on  the  hearth-stone,  under  the 


Presentation  of  tlic,  Literature          235 

nursery  lamp,  in  the  shady  garden,  and  in  their 
own  teacher's  schoolroom. 

As  a  practical  matter,  the  teacher,  in  pre- 
senting a  story  or  a  narrative  poem,  should  take 
advantage  of  the  natural  pauses,  the  end  of  one 
incident  or  movement  and  the  beginning  of  the 
next,  in  dividing  his  material  for  the  actual 
lessons,  so  that  in  a  long  story  or  in  a  drama, 
the  end  of  the  lesson  coincides  with  the  close 
of  a  series  of  incidents  or  the  close  of  one  of 
the  larger  movements.  Nothing  spoils  a  bit  of 
literature  more  effectually  than  taking  it  in  acci- 
dental or  fragmentary  bits.  At  any  cost  of  time 
and  pains,  let  there  be  a  sense  of  completeness 
in  each  lesson,  a  feeling  of  repose,  if  only  tem- 
porary, at  the  end  of  each  instalment  And 
whether  he  closes  his  lesson  or  not,  the  teacher 
should  at  the  close  of  every  such  movement  in  a 
class  of  older  children  pause  to  discuss,  to  review, 
or  to  summarize.  When  he  makes  this  recog- 
nition of  the  close  of  a  series  of  incidents,  or  of  a 
movement,  he  accomplishes  two  things :  he  secures 
a  certain  amount  of  completeness,  and  he  helps 
on  in  the  children  the  desirable  sense  of  organiza- 
tion, of  composition,  in  their  story  or  play. 

The  nature  of  the  bit  of  literature  chosen  must 
guide  the  teacher  in  his  first  presentation  of  it. 
When  it  is  a  thing  in  which  the  movement  is 


236    Literature  in  the  Elementary  School 

rapid,  or  the  interest  in  the  action  or  the  plot 
intense,  it  will  doubtless  be  best  to  go  rapidly 
through  the  whole,  not  pausing  for  any  details. 
Then  go  over  it  slowly  again,  pausing  for  appre- 
ciation and  comment.  It  seems  well  to  repeat 
here  that  if  the  story  is  long  and  the  plot  involves 
any  intensity  of  suspense,  it  may  be  well  to  let  the 
children  know  the  issue  early  in  the  story;  the 
wisdom  of  this  step  will  depend  largely  upon  the 
average  nerves  of  the  class.  There  may  well  be 
several  readings  of  a  thing  worth  reading  once. 
Every  teacher  knows  how  well  content  the 
younger  children,  especially,  are  to  go  over  a 
thing  many  times.  The  interest  of  the  dass  of 
older  children  may  be  kept  up  through  the  many 
readings  of  a  story  or  poem,  by  shifting  each 
time  the  ground  of  comment  or  discussion,  open- 
ing up  a  new  question  or  revealing  a  new  point 
of  interest  at  each  reading.  In  other  pieces,  the 
slower  moving  stories  and  lyrics,  the  children  are 
willing  to  linger  over  the  details  at  the  first 
reading. 

It  is  all  but  impossible  to  indicate  what  such 
details  are,  or  what  we  mean  by  lingering  over 
them.  I  have  pointed  out  in  some  detail,  in  the 
chapter  on  poetry,  the  kind  of  thing  that  one 
would  linger  over  for  comment  and  question. 

If  it  is  a  new,  rare,  or  especially  picturesque 


Presentation  of  the  Literature          237 

word,  we  may  ask  questions  and  receive  com- 
ments, or  according  to  the  situation,  give  quick 
and  direct  information  about  it:  "The  golden 
orange  glows;"  "He  strung  the  bow  deftly;" 
"The  butter-cup  catches  the  sun  in  its  chalice." 
These  three  words  call  for  attention  for  different 
reasons,  in  addition  to  the  fact  that  any  or  all  of 
them  might  be  new  and  unknown  words  to  the 
class.  In  the  case  of  a  figure  or  image  we  would 
pause  and  discuss  the  various  terms  and  details  of 
it,  until  most  members  of  the  class  have  at  least 
intellectually  apprehended  it.  Such  a  complex 
little  figure  and  image  as  "footsteps  of  the  fall- 
ing drops  down  the  ladder  of  the  leaves"  calls  for 
leisurely  appreciation  and  assimilation.  A 
peculiar  musical  onomatopoeic  line  will  interest 
them;  "Burly  dozing  bumble-bee,"  is  such  a  line. 
They  will  be  delighted  to  discover  why  this 
peculiar  assemblage  of  sounds  was  chosen  in  con- 
nection with  this  insect.  "The  long  day  wanes, 
the  slow  moon  climbs,"  indicating  and  imitating 
by  its  slow  movement  and  long  vowels  the  pas- 
sage of  the  lingering  hours,  is  an  effect  they 
should  be  led  to  realize.  We  should  pause  to 
point  out,  or  to  inquire  into,  the  implications 
of  some  pregnant  or  pivotal  sentence,  such 
as:  "Now,  Cinderella's  godmother  was  fay;" 
or,  "Cyclops,  you  asked  my  noble  name,  and  I 


238     Literature  in  the  Elementary  School 

will  tell  it:  My  name  is  Noman."  The  bit 
selected  for  detailed  study  may  be  larger,  amount- 
ing to  a  complete  incident — for  example,  Nausicaa 
with  her  maids  washing  her  beautiful  clothes  by 
the  river ;  some  scene  or  incident  full  of  character 
and  symbolical  meaning,  as  the  scene  with  the  hen 
and  the  cat  in  The  Ugly  Duckling;  some  ethical 
or  moral  question  that  calls  for  judgment,  such 
as  Robin  Hood's  treatment  of  the  unjust  abbot,  or 
Portia's  decision  as  to  Shylock's  bond. 

These  examples,  chosen  at  random,  are  in- 
tended simply  to  suggest  the  kind  of  thing  to  be 
stopped  over.  It  would  be  a  grave  mistake  to 
pause  over  every  such  detail,  or  to  try  to  make 
sure  that  the  children  apprehend  even  intellect- 
ually every  item  as  it  appears.  Leave  many  of 
them  for  subsequent  readings;  let  many  of  them 
lie  permanently,  depending  rather  on  the  effects 
of  the  general  tone  and  spirit  of  the  production 
for  your  results.  One  of  the  first  lessons  to  learn 
about  the  teaching  of  literature  is  that  it  will  not 
do  to  teach  the  whole  art  on  the  basis  of  one 
specimen — that  it  will  not  do  to  teach  in  any  case 
all  that  one  could.  One  must  rather  try  to  teach 
the  characteristic,  the  inevitable  lesson — the  lesson 
demanded  by  the  genius  of  his  piece.  Let  the 
teacher  avoid  by  all  means  the  pitfall  of  "talky- 
talk"  and  lecture.  Keep  the  literature  as  near 


Presentation  of  the  Literature          239 

play  as  possible — the  play  that  cultivates  and  dis- 
ciplines through  the  avenues  of  refined  pleasure. 

It  will  often  be  necessary  for  the  teacher  to 
shorten  and  otherwise  edit  the  thing  he  chooses. 
There  will  come  from  time  to  time  dull  passages, 
descriptive  passages,  passages  whose  subject- 
matter  is  too  mature,  or  in  some  other  way  unde- 
sirable for  his  class.  He  will  often  be  able  to 
economize  effort  and  to  secure  a  better  unity  of 
impression,  by  omitting  what  is  mere  enrichment 
of  the  picture  or  reinforcement  of  the  teaching; 
such  incidents  may  be  removed  without  altering 
the  meaning  or  the  movement.  The  teacher  must 
be  experienced  enough  to  recognize  such  unneces- 
sary or  superfluous  incidents;  otherwise  he  only 
mutilates  his  story  in  condensing  it. 

When  the  children  have  advanced  to  some  pro- 
ficiency in  reading,  they  will,  of  course,  begin  to 
read  some  of  their  own  literature,  reading  aloud 
in  the  class  and  often  having  the  text  before  them 
as  the  teacher  reads.  All  the  children  that  can 
read  at  all  should,  as  a  rule,  have  a  printed  copy 
of  anything  they  are  asked  to  memorize;  and  as 
a  matter  of  social  duty,  the  teacher  of  literature, 
or  the  teacher  in  the  literature  class,  will  from 
time  to  time  have  a  careful  exercise  in  reading 
for  the  younger  readers ;  while  he  will  have  much 
reading  aloud  from  the  older  grades ;  remember- 


240    Literature  in  the  Elementary  School 

ing  that  the  inevitable  obverse  of  receiving  litera- 
ture through  the  ear  is  the  rendering  it  with  the 
voice.  But,  on  the  whole,  they  will  fare  best  if 
up  to  and  probably  through  the  sixth  grade  they 
receive  what  is  distinctively  literature  through  the 
ear.  And  even  after  that  they  should  often 
hear  their  material  rendered  by  a  good  reader  in 
class,  even  though  they  may  be  required  to  read 
the  same  material  over  beforehand,  or  subsequent 
to  the  class  reading. 

Every  teacher  should  have  in  reserve  a  store  of 
stories  and  poems,  and  beautiful  passages  from 
great  masterpieces  which  he  produces  from  time 
to  time  as  a  surprise  to  his  class.  This  is  many  a 
time  the  most  effective  lesson  possible — adding  to 
the  children's  pleasure  the  delight  of  surprise, 
creating  in  them  the  impression  of  the  inexhaust- 
ible supply  of  beautiful  things,  and  testifying  to 
their  teacher's  own  joy  in  the  things  he  wants 
them  to  love. 

Other  minor  and  practical  matters,  more 
closely  connected  with  the  return  from  the  chil- 
dren than  the  presentation  to  them,  will  be  dis- 
cussed in  the  next  chapter. 

Finally,  the  whole  matter  is  conditioned  and 
colored  by  the  fact  that  in  any  case  the  literature 
is  transmitted  to  the  children  through  the  person- 
ality of  the  teacher.  This  is  partially  true  of  all 


Presentation  of  the  Literature          241 

a  child's  subjects  and  his  whole  experience  in 
school;  but  the  fact  that  literature  is  so  inwoven 
with  feeling,  and  so  bound  up  with  matters  of  per- 
sonal taste,  that  it  concerns  itself  so  much  with 
matters  of  ethics  and  conduct,  makes  it  peculiarly 
liable  to  take  on  color,  to  narrow  or  to  widen 
with  the  personality  of  him  who  chooses  and  ren- 
ders it.  A  teacher  must  accept  this  fact,  and 
profit  by  the  obvious  warnings  that  arise  out  of 
it;  but  better  than  that,  build  his  work  upon  the 
many  beneficent  aspects  of  the  fact.  The  teacher 
before  his  class  is  the  sacred  bard  at  the  feast; 
he  is  an  exhaustless  spring  of  joy,  a  tireless  play- 
fellow, a  preacher  who  never  proses,  a  school- 
master who  never  scolds. 


CHAPTER  XV 

THE  RETURN  FROM  THE  CHILDREN 

The  discussion  must  naturally  limit  itself 
largely  to  the  immediate  return  that  we  may  ask 
of  the  children  from  their  lessons  in  literature; 
since  it  is  not  possible  to  do  more  than  hint  at 
their  ultimate  effects.  It  is,  of  course,  a  matter  of 
pedagogical  morality  to  ask  from  them  some 
immediate  and  practical  return,  or  some  actual 
literary  contributions  to  the  lessons.  There  are 
certain  modifications  of  the  modern  doctrine  that 
every  stimulation  of  the  mind  or  the  emotions 
should  eventuate  in  activity — modifications  that 
apply  to  all  the  fine  arts.  The  aesthetic  experi- 
ence is  a  complete  experience  in  itself;  the 
apprehension,  the  enjoyment,  and  the  final  appre- 
ciation which  one  passes  through  in  his  cbntact 
with  a  beautiful  piece  of  art — a  picture,  a 
symphony,  an  ode — constitute  a  complete  psychic 
experience;  they  eventuate  in  a  better  taste,  a 
higher  ideal,  the  record  of  a  pure  and  noble  joy. 
They  do  not  demand  further  activity.  We  need 
not  feel,  therefore,  that  it  is  a  matter  of  necessity 
to  ask  that  in  every  case  the  class  make  some 
tangible  response  to  every  literary  impression. 

24  a 


Return  from  the  Children  243 

But  the  teacher  of  literature  must  feel  that 
he  shares  with  all  their  other  teachers  the  re- 
sponsibility and  the  duty  of  making  social  beings 
of  the  children,  of  equipping  them  with  the  means 
of  expression  and  communication,  so  that  they 
may  turn  back  into  the  sum-total  a  product  in 
exchange  for  the  material  they  draw  out.  He 
must,  therefore,  associate  with  the  lessons  a 
legitimate  amount  of  exercise  for  his  class  in 
imparting  what  they  have  learned  and  in  creating 
literary  products  for  themselves. 

The  first  and  simplest  return  we  ask  is  the  oral 
comment,  the  immediate  discussion  that  accom- 
panies the  presentation  of  the  work.  When  a 
story  has  been  read,  there  should  always  be  op- 
portunity for  question  and  comment.  This  the 
teacher  must  guide  and  restrain.  Of  course,  he 
should  be  hospitable  to  suggestions  and  contri- 
butions, patient,  and  generous  to  questions.  But 
he  must  be  cautious  never  to  let  the  talk  even  on 
the  part  of  the  smallest  children  remain  mere 
prattle,  or  degenerate  into  an  aimless  scamper 
around  the  paddock;  he  will  see  that  there  is  a 
point  or  a  line  to  ding  to,  and  he  will  manage 
that  this  shall  be  done.  Every  teacher  knows 
how  one  petty  or  commonplace  child,  one  would- 
be  wit  or  skeptic,  can  drag  the  discussion  into  the 
dust  and  keep  it  there,  unless  he  is  promptly  and 


244    Literature  in  the  Elementary  School 

perhaps  vigorously  suppressed.  Of  course,  in 
these  discussions  there  is  very  small  opportunity 
for  training  the  voice  and  criticizing  the  language. 
Let  there  be,  if  possible,  a  free  flow  of  comment 
and  contribution,  uninterrupted  by  any  corrections 
except  those  of  the  most  egregious  errors.  The 
teacher  who  guides  it  should  study  his  questions, 
and  even  with  the  little  ones  should  bring  into  the 
light  of  discussion  the  vital  and  salient  things, 
and  by  means  of  a  question  from  time  to  time, 
keep  the  conference  away  from  triviality  and 
gossip.  He  will  begin  to  train  his  children  from 
the  beginning  to  make  legitimate  inductions  from 
their  material,  and  will  require  them  to  give 
reasons  based  upon  the  actual  story  or  poem.  He 
will  be  able  to  lead  them  to  find  the  precise  point 
of  departure  in  the  story  for  the  introduction  of 
their  personal  experience  or  their  new  incident, 
and  he  will  help  them  in  every  case  to  make  clear 
the  application  of  their  own  material  to  the  dis- 
cussion. 

It  is  in  this  spontaneous  and  free,  but  guided, 
conference  that  the  children  get  most  good  out 
of  the  literature  lessons.  Of  course,  as  they  grow 
older  the  discussion  of  persons  and  their  conduct, 
and  the  ethical  and  social  bearing  of  events  and 
opinions,  may  be  broadened  and  deepened.  As 
they  grow  older,  too,  more  correctness  and  style 


Return  jram  the  Children  245 

and  fulness  may  be  demanded  in  their  impromptu 
contributions  to  the  discussion.  A  child  may, 
without  suspecting  it,  and  consequently  without 
self -consciousness,  acquire  some  considerable 
skill  in  extemporaneous  speaking  and  some  genu- 
ine intellectual  ease  in  conversation  from  these 
class  discussions. 

Another  natural  return  to  be  asked  from  the 
children  is  the  repetition  of  the  story,  in  whole  or 
in  part,  by  members  of  the  class  in  their  own 
words ;  though  of  course,  after  many  hearings  of 
it  well  told  the  children  will  have  incorporated 
into  their  own  vocabulary  the  most  useful  and 
characteristic  words.  This  exercise  should  never 
be  allowed  to  pass  into  a  careless  and  slipshod 
performance;  the  children  should  be  alive  and 
responding  alertly  to  the  call  made  upon  them. 
Their  grammar,  their  sentences,  their  emphases 
and  intonations  may  appropriately  be  corrected 
more  vigorously  in  this  exercise  than  in  the  spon- 
taneous discussion. 

The  best  literary  effect  is  not  secured  by  having 
the  story  retold  immediately  after  the  children 
have  heard  it,  nor  by  having  them  understand 
beforehand  that  it  is  to  be  retold  as  a  formal  exer- 
cise. It  may  be  brought  out  of  them  on  some  later 
occasion  so  as  to  give  it  the  air  of  an  independent 
contribution  to  the  pleasure  of  the  class.  Nothing 


246    Literature  in  the  Elementary  School 

is  more  deadly  to  the  atmosphere  of  a  story  than 
the  certainty  on  the  part  of  the  children  that  they 
are  going  to  be  called  upon  to  retell  it.  This 
should  never  become  a  habitual  exercise.  It  helps 
in  a  literary  as  well  as  a  social  way  to  divide  the 
story  in  the  retelling  among  the  children  ac- 
cording to  movements,  or  even  according  to  inci- 
dents, since  this  calls  attention  to  its  parts  and 
organization. 

We  may  reasonably  expect  all  the  poems 
taught  as  literature  to  be  memorized,  since  it  does 
not  take  many  repetitions  of  a  poem  to  fix  it  in  a 
child's  memory.  The  vocal  production  of  this 
poem  gives  the  best  opportunity  for  cultivating 
the  child  in  voice,  in  enunciation  and  pronuncia- 
tion. The  teacher  should  not,  of  course,  seem 
querulous  and  exacting  in  small  matters,  and  it 
is  better  to  leave  a  few  careless  spots  in  any  one 
poem  than  to  spoil  the  children's  pleasure  in  it  by 
too  close  criticism;  but  he  can  do  much  to  help 
all  the  children  toward  a  distinguished  manner 
of  expression.  These  memorized  poems,  like 
the  stories  they  learn,  should  not  be  regarded 
as  formal  exercises  to  be  recited  once  and  be  done 
with.  They  should  be  called  for  from  time  to 
time  as  contributions  to  the  pleasure  of  the  whole 
class.  Time  is  profitably  given  now  and  then  to  a 
story  or  verse  tournament,  a  sang-fest,  when  the 


Return  from  tfte  Children  247 

whole  store  of  things  acquired  is  brought  out 
and  enjoyed.  In  the  two  older  classes  each  child 
may  be  required  to  choose,  prepare,  and  present 
to  the  class  a  bit  of  literature.  The  choice  and 
preparation  must  be  done  in  consultation  with 
the  teacher ;  the  presentation  to  the  class  regarded 
as  a  contribution  to  their  artistic  experience  and 
accepted  without  criticism. 

Paraphrasing  is  a  process  of  doubtful  value. 
It  is  never  possible  to  express  the  precise  mean- 
ing or  mood  in  other  words,  and  in  the  case  of 
verse  it  serves  to  destroy  the  sense  of  inviolability 
of  form  that  one  would  desire  to  develop  and 
deepen.  The  direction,  "State  the  same  thought 
in  other  words,"  should  never  be  given.  To  one 
delicately  alive  to  the  value  of  words  and  the 
shades  of  thought,  it  is  a  mere  contradiction  in 
terms.  The  same  may  be  said  of  the  practice  of 
getting  the  children  to  substitute  synonyms;  in 
literature,  especially  in  poetry,  there  can  be  no 
true  synonyms,  and  no  precisely  synonymous  ex- 
pressions. 

Many  pleasant  experiments  are  to  be  made  in 
connecting  some  of  the  handwork  of  the  young- 
est children  with  their  literature.  The  attempt 
to  realize  some  of  their  images  in  actual  stuff 
constitutes  an  artistic  experiment  that  has  its 
literary  reverberations,  and  helps  to  deepen  the 


248    Literature  in  the  Elementary  School 

association.  Let  them  make  a  cloak  for  Little 
Red  Riding-Hood,  a  fairies'  coach  of  a  nut  shell, 
a  boat,  a  tent — or  whatever  little  object  or 
property  is  imbedded  in  the  story.  Out  of 
practically  every  story,  and  out  of  many  of 
the  poems,  they  get  an  inspiration  for  a  picture 
or  a  bit  of  modeling.  Such  associations  with 
literature  are  legitimate  and  natural.  This  appears 
very  clear  when  we  reflect  that  we  are  hoping  to 
cultivate  the  taste  and  imagination  of  the  chil- 
dren, and  to  teach  them  to  love  human  life,  with 
all  that  this  implies,  as  well  as  to  drill  them  in 
language,  grammar,  and  writing. 

It  seems  necessary  to  handle  aspects  of  the 
problem  of  language  and  writing  in  connection 
with  literature  in  several  different  places,  as  we 
come  upon  the  topic  from  different  points  of  view. 
As  has  been  said  before,  it  is  the  duty  of  the 
teacher  of  literature,  and  of  the  lessons  in  litera- 
ture, to  help  along  the  work  in  the  language  arts. 
It  is  even  fair  to  assume  that  the  children  will 
take  more  interest  in  their  composition  lessons, 
and  will  get  more  profit  out  of  them,  when  they 
are  attached  to  something  they  have  done  in  liter- 
ature; but  this  is  because  they  get  out  of  litera- 
ture more  impulse  toward  creation,  and  more 
inspiration  toward  a  beautiful  and  striking  man- 
ner of  expression.  But  composition  is  not  merely 


Return  from  the  Children  249 

a  medium  of  creative  expression ;  it  is  a  means  of 
plain  communication,  and  should  be  developed 
in  both  directions  and  from  both  sources.  This 
means  that  the  children  should  write  in  con- 
nection with  all  their  subjects,  so  that  they  do 
not,  on  the  one  hand,  associate  "English"  and 
writing  with  literature  only,  and  do  not,  on  the 
other  hand,  run  the  risk  of  forming  no  style  but 
a  literary  style. 

It  is  certainly  true  that  we  disquiet  ourselves 
and  persecute  the  children  unnecessarily  concern- 
ing the  whole  matter  of  writing  during  the  ele- 
mentary period.  The  children  scarcely  acquire 
the  process  of  writing  as  a  manual  thing  in  the 
first  four  years.  During  the  next  four  by  good 
luck  and  much  toil,  most  of  them  manage  to 
reduce  it  to  the  stage  of  a  tool.  Their  conscious- 
ness of  the  process  added  to  their  consciousness  of 
their  spelling  and  grammar,  leaves  them  little 
freedom  in  using  the  written  composition  as  an 
avenue  of  spontaneous  expression.  Add  to  this 
the  fact  that  a  large  part  of  this  period — the 
period  of  ten  to  fourteen — is  the  beginning  of  the 
great  reticence.  They  are  not  telling  what  they 
know  or  feel;  they  have  narrowed  their  vocabu- 
lary down  to  the  absolutely  necessary  terms; 
they  have  seen  through  every  device  by  which  the 
teacher  seeks  to  get  them  to  express  themselves. 


250    Literature  in  the  Elementary  School 

Their  written  compositions  will  be,  therefore, 
dogged  exercises,  and  should  be  connected,  as 
far  as  possible,  with  colorless  information  sub- 
jects. There  are  exceptional  children  and  excep- 
tional classes,  indeed,  to  whom  these  generaliza- 
tions do  not  apply.  We  have  all  heard  of  classes 
in  distant  elementary  schools  which  "loved"  to 
write. 

But  there  will  of  necessity  be  a  certain  amount 
of  composition  that  will  fall  in  with  the  work  in 
literature,  and  will  constitute  one  of  the  logical 
returns  we  ask  of  the  children.  This  the  teacher 
would  like  to  have  as  spontaneous  and  as  literary 
as  possible.  In  general,  we  should  like  it  to  be  crea- 
tive, and  not  critical  or  reproductive.  We  would 
encourage  them  to  devise  new  adventures  of 
Odysseus,  or  of  Robin  Hood,  to  give  an  experi- 
ence of  their  own  organized  into  a  genuine  story, 
an  interpretation  and  effective  description  of  some 
incident  or  event  that  has  interested  them  or  been 
invented  by  them.  It  is  necessary,  if  you  expect 
to  get  anything  literary  or  creative  out  of  them, 
to  help  to  put  them  in  the  creative  and  literary 
mood.  Talk  over  with  them  the  thing  they  mean 
to  do ;  see  that  they  have  the  vocabulary  they  will 
obviously  need;  enlarge  their  range  of  compari- 
son and  allusion  by  discussion ;  lead  them  to  divide 
their  material  into  suitable  parts  with  some 


'Return  from  the  Children  251 

acceptable  sequence ;  enrich  their  topics  by  kindred 
material;  guide  them  into  the  observation  and 
interpretation  of  material  in  the  imaginative  and 
literary  way. 

Some  aspects  of  this  process  are  illustrated  in 
the  following  experience:  A  teacher  had  been 
reading  Howard  Pyle's  Robin  Hood,  with  occa- 
sionally one  of  the  original  ballads  interspersed 
(but  not  the  traditional  "Robin  Hood  and  the 
Potter"),  for  three  months;  the  children  had 
also  memorized  during  the  same  time  three  short 
lyrics;  and  in  every  lesson  there  had  been  dis- 
cussions ;  the  time  had  come  when  they  must  make 
something.  They  decided  to  follow  the  plan  of 
their  book  and  tell  how  Robin  Hood  added  a  new 
member  to  his  band.  These  children  were  making 
pottery  by  way  of  handwork,  and  had  lately  had 
an  interesting  visit  to  see  a  potter  working  with 
his  wheel.  So  the  suggestion  naturally  made  by 
some  member  of  the  class,  that  the  new  member 
of  Robin  Hood's  band  be  a  potter,  was  received 
with  instant  favor.  The  teacher  read  them  "Peter 
Bell,"  and  their  hero  promptly  became  a  peddler- 
potter — the  very  same,  suggested  an  agile  child, 
whom  Tom,  the  Piper's  son,  found  beating  his 
ass,  and  upon  whom  he  played  the  merry  trick. 
By  this  time  the  class  could  be  restrained  no 
longer.  They  climbed  over  one  another's  shoul- 


252     Literature  in  the  Elementary  School 

ders,  literally  and  figuratively,  with  eager  sug- 
gestions and  copious  details.  After  discussing  the 
plan  long  enough  to  suggest  an  organization  of 
the  material  into  three  natural  parts,  the  children 
were  set  to  work.  The  orderly  and  patient  chil- 
dren produced  satisfactory  stories,  abundant  in 
material  and  beautiful  in  detail.  All  the  others 
produced  stories  which,  however  disorderly  and 
careless,  were  breathless  with  feeling  and  over- 
flowing with  stuff.  Some  of  them  adopted  Tom, 
the  Piper's  son,  as  the  new  member  of  the  band, 
not  being  able  to  forgive  the  potter  for  beating 
the  ass ;  some  adopted  them  both ;  others,  only  the 
Potter,  duly  lessoned  and  converted ;  all  provided 
for  the  donkey.  When  they  were  aroused  and 
provided,  there  was  a  spontaneous  outflow  of 
what  was  in  every  case,  allowing  for  the  varying 
temperaments  and  acquirements  of  the  children,  a 
really  literary  production. 

As  long  as  the  children  are  seriously  hampered 
with  the  mechanics  of  writing,  they  should  be 
allowed  to  dictate  their  work,  when  any  practical 
plan  can  be  devised  for  this.  When  the  class  is 
not  too  large,  they  should  be  taught  to  make  a 
co-operative  product,  the  teacher  taking  down 
what  they  agree  upon,  revising  it  to  suit  them. 
In  the  case  of  the  older  children  these  spontaneous 
and  "literary"  productions  should  not  be  too 


Return  from  the  Children  253 

minutely  criticized,  and  the  revising  and  rewriting 
of  them  should  not  become  a  matter  of  drudgery. 
They  should  have  other  and  more  colorless  writ- 
ten work  upon  which  they  may  be  drilled,  lest 
the  drill  should  kill  their  creative  impulse  or  spoil 
their  pleasure  in  the  created  product.  Their  more 
important  productions  may  be  filed  and  given 
back  to  them  six  months  later  for  their  own  cor- 
rection. This  critical  review  of  their  own  work 
is  generally  an  occasion  of  much  pride,  and  the 
acquisition  of  some  wholesome  self-knowledge. 

It  is  possible  that  this  attempt  to  distinguish 
literary  writing  from  other  composition  may  con- 
vey the  impression  that  literature  and  literary  pro- 
duction are  set  off,  quite  apart  from  life,  and  the 
children's  other  experiences  and  interests.  This 
would  be  a  misfortune.  Whenever  any  aspect 
of  their  lives,  their  work,  or  their  play  appeals  to 
their  emotions  and  their  imaginations,  when  they 
are  provided  with  a  large  vocabulary  and  have 
opened  for  them  avenues  of  comparison,  they  will 
turn  back  a  literary  product.  But  it  is  seldom 
desirable  to  create  this  atmosphere  in  connection 
with  their  other  studies,  and  the  literary  style 
and  method  is  not  a  desirable  one  for  all  subjects. 

For  the  sake  of  the  practice  in  writing  and 
composing,  and  for  the  sake  of  acquiring  ease  in 
telling  in  writing  what  they  know  or  desire  to 


254    Literature  in  the  Elementary  School 

communicate,  the  children  may  write  something 
every  day.  But  not  oftener  than  once  in  six 
weeks  can  we  build  up  in  a  class  the  atmosphere, 
furnish  the  material,  and  bring  up  the  enthusiasm 
for  the  production  of  something  worth  while  in  a 
literary  way — story,  essay,  play,  or  poem. 

To  set  the  elementary  child,  or  even  the  high- 
school  scholar,  tasks  of  investigating  in  litera- 
ture, as  if  he  were  a  little  college  student  is  a 
serious  mistake;  or  to  set  for  him  themes  which 
call  for  such  opinions  and  judgments  as  could 
be  safely  given  only  by  a  mature  person.  For 
instance,  to  ask  the  eighth  grade  in  the  aver- 
age school  to  write  a  character-sketch  of  Shylock 
is  to  make  a  bid  for  insincerity  and  unfounded 
judgment.  But  satisfactory  results  may  be  ob- 
tained by  giving  the  children  a  simple  syllabus  of 
questions  and  suggestions,  indicating  quite  suit- 
able problems  for  them  to  work  at  in  their  out-of- 
school  reading;  this  little  syllabus  is  then  made 
the  basis  of  class  discussion,  and  parts  of  it 
finally,  of  written  work.  It  requires  some  skill 
to  make  such  a  syllabus,  since  it  must  not  be 
made  up  of  leading  questions  nor  of  tediously 
detailed  suggestions,  neither  must  it  attempt  to 
exhaust  the  material;  but  must  be  calculated  to 
stimulate  the  children  to  observe  and  to  think, 
and  must  be  designed  to  guide  them  into  those 


Return  from  the  Children  255 

aspects  of  the  story,  play  or  poem  that  they  may 
suitably  and  profitably  consider.  Such  a  guide 
should  be  placed  in  the  hands  of  young  students 
including  secondary  children,  whenever  they  are 
studying  a  mature  and  complex  masterpiece. 

The  dramatization  and  acting  of  any  bit  of 
literature  that  yields  to  this  process  is  in  many 
ways  the  most  satisfactory  return  we  can  ask.  In 
a  previous  chapter  much  has  been  said  about  the 
various  dramatic  settings  and  accompaniments  of 
literature.  From  the  treatment  of  rhymes  and 
jingles  as  suggestions  for  games  and  plays,  on 
through  the  genuine  dramatization  of  a  story,  to 
the  presentation  of  The  Merchant  of  Venice  or 
some  other  developed  literary  drama,  the  teacher 
should  forward  as  much  as  possible  this  mode  of 
calling  out  the  children.  They  must,  of  course, 
be  guided  by  the  teacher  in  the  choice  of  a  story 
for  dramatization,  seeking  one  that  has  clearly 
marked  movements,  some  distinct  events,  a  pretty 
well-rounded  plot,  occasion  for  dialogue,  and 
other  dramatic  possibilities.  The  class  may  early 
be  guided  to  the  division  of  the  story  into  its 
natural  acts  and  scenes,  which  implies  the  omis- 
sion of  superfluous  incidents  and  details.  The 
difficulty  comes  in  the  supplying  of  the  actual 
dialogue.  The  resourceful  teacher  will  secure 
this  dialogue  by  various  means;  for  some  of  the 


256    Literature  in  the  Elementary  School 

scenes  it  will  flow  off  without  effort  from  the 
class  in  lesson  assembled,  one  child  suggesting  a 
remark,  another  the  reply,  these  being  recorded 
and  criticized  by  the  class.  For  certain  other 
scenes  the  dialogue  may  be  prepared  by  groups 
of  two  or  more  children  working  apart  from  the 
class.  For  certain  crucial  and  lofty  scenes  the 
teacher  should  make  the  "book."  The  whole 
must  be  submitted  for  discussion  in  the  class,  and 
may  in  the  end  call  for  considerable  revision  from 
the  teacher;  for  the  younger  children  cannot  be 
expected  to  know  and  to  meet  the  demands  of 
dramatic  dialogue — it  must  not  only  be  speech, 
and  fairly  good  as  conversation,  but  it  must  for- 
ward the  play  with  every  sentence.  Of  course, 
this  revision  must  never  be  so  sweeping  as  radi- 
cally to  remake  the  play,  or  even  to  alter  the 
essential  character  that  the  children  have  given  it, 
no  matter  how  crude  it  may  seem  to  the  teacher 
and  to  other  mature  persons  who  hear  it.  Let  it 
stand  as  a  bit  of  child-art,  just  as  we  rejoice  to  let 
crude  productions  stand  as  folk-art. 

Of  course,  when  the  older  children  present  a 
literary  play  or  any  part  of  it,  they  must  mem- 
orize and  give  it  conscientiously  as  it  is  written. 
Indeed,  the  rendering  with  understanding  and 
appreciation,  of  whatever  they  have  learned  of 
good  and  beautiful  literature  is,  after  all,  the 


Return  jrom  the  Children  257 

most  satisfactory  and  natural  return.  If  even  in 
high  school  we  asked  this  of  the  children,  instead 
of  those  themes  of  crude  or  stale  literary  criticism 
which  we  all  too  often  get,  great  would  be  the 
gain  in  freshness,  in  sincerity,  in  appreciation, 
and  in  ultimate  taste. 

If  we  accustom  the  children  to  it  from  the 
beginning,  and  never  intimate  to  them  that  it  is 
difficult,  it  is  about  as  easy  to  get  verse  out  of 
them  as  prose.  This  is  particularly  true  if  the 
exercise  is  a  social  or  co-operative  one,  in  which 
the  whole  class  unites  to  produce  the  ballad  or  the 
song.  What  the  single  child  could  not  accom- 
plish, the  group  does  with  perfect  ease.  And 
when  the  poem  is  done,  nobody  can  tell  who  sug- 
gested this  rhyme,  this  word,  this  whole  line ;  but 
the  whole  is  a  product  of  which  each  child  is 
proud,  though  he  alone  could  never  have  com- 
passed it.  The  communal  story,  ballad,  song,  or 
play  is  a  unique  and  interesting  performance,  and 
any  teacher  who  has  ever  assisted  in  making  it 
feels  sure  that  he  has  seen  far  into  the  social 
possibilities  of  art  and  the  philosophy  of  litera- 
ture. Every  teacher  must  devise  his  own  plan  of 
getting  this  co-operative,  communal,  social  bit  of 
literature  made,  but  every  teacher  of  literature 
should  try  it. 

All  this,  of  course,  has  to  do  with  the  immedi- 


258    Literature  in  the  Elementary  School 

ate  practical  return  from  the  studies  in  literature. 
Concerning  the  ultimate,  distant  return  we  can- 
not speak  in  terms  of  teaching  and  learning.  Art 
is  long;  like  the  human  child,  being  destined  to  a 
long  and  vicissitudinous  life,  it  had  a  long  child- 
hood; and  this  is  true  of  its  growth  in  each  indi- 
vidual as  of  its  growth  in  the  race.  So  far  as 
regards  many  of  the  most  desired  results  of  litera- 
ture, we  can  but  sow  the  seed,  and  wait  years  for 
the  bloom — a  lifetime,  maybe,  for  the  fruit.  But 
though  we  may  not  reach  a  hand  through  all  the 
years  to  grasp  the  far-off  interest  of  our  toil,  we 
have  every  reason  to  believe  that  the  harvest  will 
be  fair. 


CHAPTER  XVI 

THE  CORRELATIONS  OF  LITERATURE 

The  term  "correlation"  is  not  to  be  used  in 
this  chapter  in  the  specialized  and  technical  sense 
that  it  has  taken  on  in  pedagogical  discussion.  It 
will  be  used,  with  apologies,  to  designate  all  con- 
nections of  literature  with  any  other  subject  or 
discipline  in  the  elementary  curriculum. 

No  one  interested  in  education  can  have  failed 
to  notice  the  fact  that  the  doctrines  of  concentra- 
tion, correlation,  condensation,  by  whatever  name 
called  or  under  whatever  aspect  approached,  have 
undergone  many  modifications  and  shifts  of  em- 
phasis. Like  every  other  educational  doctrine  that 
has  much  of  the  truth  in  it,  it  was  welcomed  in  the 
early  days  of  its  promulgation  as  the  final  solu- 
tion, and  seemed  for  a  time  to  sweep  out  of  exist- 
ence, or  into  its  own  radius,  every  other  theory  or 
practice. 

One  is  obliged  to  wonder  if  educational  people 
are  peculiarly  liable  to  be  caught  by  a  formula 
or  an  apparently  axiomatic  statement,  build  every- 
thing upon  it,  and  silence  every  question  by  a 
reverential  appeal  to  it.  Such  seemed  to  be  the 
attitude  toward  the  doctrine  of  correlation  when 
259 


260    Literature  in  the  Elementary  School 

it  first  sifted  down  from  the  savants  to  the  actual 
teachers  in  the  actual  schools;  and  many  and 
monumental  were  the  follies  committed  in  the 
name  of  this  pedagogical  religion.  Modified 
and  adapted  under  actual  practical  conditions, 
and  criticized  by  the  present  generation  of  edu- 
cational philosophers,  it  has  come  down  to 
the  school  of  today — that  is  to  say,  the  school 
that  is  sensitive  enough  and  free  enough  to 
respond  quickly  to  new  thinking — as,  on  the 
one  hand,  a  protest  against  isolation  and  abstrac- 
tion, and  on  the  other  hand,  an  appeal  for 
such  a  conservation  of  the  unity  and  naturalness 
of  the  child's  consciousness  as  is  consistent  with 
the  natural  and  legitimate  use  of  material.  In 
its  present  form  the  doctrine  no  longer  justifies 
the  violent  wresting  of  subjects  and  topics  from 
their  natural  settings,  to  be  fitted  together  in  some 
merely  logical  and  theoretical  system  of  instruc- 
tion. 

In  the  days  of  determined  and  thoroughgoing 
correlation  no  department  of  discipline  suffered 
more  than  the  arts;  and  none  of  the  other  arts 
suffered  as  did  literature.  This  is  not  difficult 
to  account  for.  Music  and  painting  are  quite 
professedly  and  obviously  unconcerned  with  sub- 
ject-matter— are,  as  a  rule,  entirely  empty  of 
definite  intellectual  content.  But  literature  has 


Correlations  of  Literature  261 

ideas,  it  embodies  concrete  images,  mentions 
specific  objects,  reflects  experience,  and  some- 
times even  uses  actual  persons  and  historical 
events;  above  all,  it  employs  the  same  medium 
of  expression  as  the  other  subjects.  All  these 
matters  made  literature  the  peculiar  prey  of  the 
ardent  correlationists ;  to  each  or  any,  perhaps 
to  all,  of  these  phenomena  in  literature  they  could 
attach  bodies  of  teaching  in  technical  subjects, 
and  systems  of  discipline  in  formal  training. 

The  case  was  equally  bad  when  literature  was 
constituted  the  center  of  the  scheme,  and  when  it 
was  attached  to  a  scheme  having  some  other 
center — geography,  for  example,  or  history.  For 
in  the  first  case  it  was  altogether  likely  that  some 
detail  or  aspect  of  the  piece  of  literature,  merely 
subsidiary  in  the  literature,  would  be  selected  for 
emphasis  and  elevated  into  the  correlating  detail ; 
the  background  or  setting  would  be  taken  out  for 
study  and  elaboration,  crowding  the  action,  the 
human  and  really  literary  elements,  out  of  sight. 
As,  for  example — and  it  is  an  authentic  example 
of  a  scheme  of  correlation — the  first-grade  chil- 
dren are  given  as  the  center  of  their  work  The 
Old  Woman  Who  Found  the  Sixpence;  from  this 
story  we  take  out  the  dog,  which  we  study  as  the 
type  of  digitigrade  carnivora.  Or — again  an  au- 
thentic example — having  read  to  the  first  grad» 


262     Literature  in  the  Elementary  School 

The  Musicians  of  Bremen,  as  one  of  them  hap- 
pens to  be  a  donkey,  we  seize  the  opportunity  to 
teach  in  detail  and  over  several  weeks  of  time,  the 
physical  peculiarities  of  the  donkey  and  his  kins- 
man the  horse,  among  many  exercises  drawing 
out  of  the  children  some  speculation  or  informa- 
tion as  to  how  much  water  or  hay  the  horse  con- 
sumes ;  to  which  hook  we  attach  instruction  as  to 
weights  and  measures ;  and  so  on  into  the  remote 
fringes  of  information  about  objects  and  persons 
used  in  the  story  only  in  the  literary  way. 

In  the  second  case,  that  in  which  literature  is 
attached  to  some  other  center,  in  feeling  about 
for  some  bit  of  literature  to  fit  into  a  geographi- 
cal fact,  a  meteorological  condition,  or  a  histori- 
cal event,  the  teacher  was  quite  likely  to  hit 
upon  a  third-  or  fourth-rate  specimen,  unsuitable 
for  his  children  in  other  respects,  and  in  teaching 
it  he  was  likely  to  force  from  it  a  meaning  and 
an  emphasis  that  as  literature  it  would  not  bear; 
as,  when  the  children  were  studying  the  migration 
of  birds,  he  taught  them  Bryant's  "To  a  Water- 
fowl," emphasizing  the  migration  and  ignoring 
the  true  emphasis  of  the  poem — the  lesson  of  a 
guiding  providence;  or  as,  apropos  of  December 
weather,  he  set  the  fifth  grade  to  reading  Whit- 
tier's  slow-moving,  meditative,  and  much  too 
mature  "Snow-Bound." 


Correlations  of  Literature  263 

As  a  matter  of  fact,  no  art  yields  kindly  to  any 
method  of  adjustment  to  other  subjects  that  em- 
phasizes the  subject-matter  or  information 
material  that  may  perchance  be  involved  in  the 
art.  Information-giving  is  not  the  method  nor 
the  mission  of  art;  the  four,  or  five  arts  if  we  in- 
clude acting,  with  which  we  may  have  to  do  in  ele- 
mentary discipline  combine  and  play  into  one 
another  without  difficulty.  It  is  not  necessary  to 
speak  again  of  the  close  and  easy  association  of 
literature  with  all  the  forms  of  acting  that  the 
children  have,  from  marching,  dancing,  and  sim- 
ple gesture,  on  to  the  acting  required  in  an  organ- 
ized drama.  On  the  musical  side,  particularly  the 
verse-form  of  literature,  it  combines  most  accept- 
ably with  music.  A  great  many  of  the  lyrics 
that  are  simple  enough  for  the  children  to  learn, 
and  many  of  the  verses  that  they  write,  are  also 
adaptable  as  songs  to  be  sung.  And  even  when 
they  cannot  be  set  to  melodies  they  share,  in 
their  spoken  form,  with  the  actual  musical  notes, 
in  the  training  of  the  ear.  The  exercises  in  draw- 
ing, painting,  and  modeling  co-operate  to  fine 
advantage  for  the  objectifying  of  the  visual 
images,  of  which  the  children  get  so  large  a  store 
from  literature.  As  a  matter  of  fact,  when  the 
children  are  set  the  task  of  objectifying  an  inner 
image,  it  is  most  likely  to  be  some  figure  or  scene 


264    Literature  in  the  Elementary  School 

from  literature  that  comes  up  for  expression — 
Nausicaa  throwing  the  ball,  Robin  Hood  string- 
ing his  bow,  Siegfried  tempering  his  sword,  Paul 
Revere  mounting  his  horse,  the  lodge  of  old 
Nokomis.  This  is  because  the  images  and  pic- 
tures they  find  in  literature  retain  in  the  minds 
of  the  children  the  glow  of  imagination,  the 
warmth  of  emotion,  the  vitality  of  a  remembered 
joy.  And  it  is  true,  as  every  teacher  knows  who 
has  taught  it  aright,  that  a  bit  of  literature  arouses 
in  the  children  a  mood  of  imaginative  creation 
such  as  no  other  subject  ever  can  awaken.  This 
mood  of  imaginative  creation  instinctively  ex- 
presses itself  in  literary  composition,  in  drawing, 
painting,  designing,  modeling,  acting,  or  music. 

On  the  very  surface  of  the  problem  of  the 
correlations  of  literature  lies  the  somewhat  diffi- 
cult question  of  the  relation  of  the  children's  liter- 
ature to  their  lessons  in  reading — as  regards  both 
their  beginning  to  read  and  their  later  practice  in 
reading.  It  remains  true  that  with  all  our  experi- 
menting and  in  spite  of  all  the  enthusiasm  we  can 
muster,  to  the  majority  of  children  and  in  the 
hands  of  most  teachers  the  mechanics  of  learning 
to  read  is  drudgery.  This  drudgery  literature 
should  share  with  the  other  subjects  in  its  due 
proportion.  One  would  not  ignore  the  fact  that 
this  "due  proportion"  may  be  very  large — larger 


Correlations  of  Literature  265 

than  that  of  any  other  subject.  It  is  quite  legiti- 
mate to  employ  the  charm  and  interest  of  litera- 
ture in  the  service  of  reading;  and  it  would  be  a 
serious  misfortune  for  the  children  to  learn  their 
reading  entirely  through  the  medium  of  color- 
less fact.  We  have  agreed  that  there  is  such 
a  thing  as  literary  reading,  different  in  many 
ways  from  the  reading  of  history  or  science. 
Even  the  younger  children  can  feel  this,  and  can 
produce  it  if  correctly  guided.  But  they  should 
not  always  be  doing  literary  reading;  they 
should  acquire  the  colorless  but  good  style  of 
merely  intellectual  reading.  This  they  will  not 
do  if  in  their  early  reading  exercises  they  are 
given  more  than  their  due  proportion  of  literature. 

It  is  undoubtedly  wise  to  make  upon  the 
teacher  and  the  children  the  impression  that  read- 
ing is  a  tool,  a  key — perhaps  we  would  better  call 
it  a  gate  through  which  one  gets  at  many 
things — the  joys  and  rewards  of  literature,  to  be 
sure,  but  also  the  images  of  history,  the  facts  of 
nature,  the  details  of  handicraft.  A  reading- 
book,  or  any  system  of  reading-lessons  that  con- 
tains nothing  but  literature  is  therefore  a 
mistake. 

From  another  point  of  view  it  is  a  misfortune 
to  identify  the  reading-lessons  with  literature.  As 
has  been  said  more  than  once  in  these  chapters, 


266    Literature  in  the  Elementary  School 

the  alert  teacher  of  our  day  is  eager  to  emanci- 
pate literature  again  from  its  bondage  to  the 
printed  page,  and  to  set  free  once  more  its  func- 
tion as  a  truly  social  art ;  making  it  also  once  more 
a  matter  of  the  listening  ear  and  the  living  voice. 

To  identify  the  reading-lessons  of  the  younger 
children  with  their  literature  lessons  is  to  keep 
them  at  things  much  too  immature,  and  to  retard 
their  mental  and  artistic  growth.  They  can  appre- 
hend and  appreciate  many  things  that  they  can- 
not read.  It  is  a  commonplace  that  a  child's 
listening  vocabulary  is  far  in  advance  of  his  read- 
ing vocabulary,  no  matter  how  or  how  early  he 
learns  to  read.  Of  course,  this  is  the  secret  of  the 
revolt  against  book-reading  of  the  children  who 
learn  to  read  late — the  simplicity  of  the  thought 
and  expression  in  the  matter  they  are  mechan- 
ically able  to  read,  makes  it  unacceptable  to  them 
intellectually.  It  is  in  the  literature  received  by 
his  ear  that  a  child  grows  and  exercises  his 
maturer  powers.  The  older  children  should  be 
taught  and  exercised  in  literary  reading,  the 
simple  interpretative  reading  of  their  literature. 
The  best  results  in  this  most  profitable  aspect  of 
the  teaching  of  literature  can  be  obtained  in  the 
secondary  period,  when  the  children  are  expert 
enough  as  readers  to  think  while  they  read,  and 


Correlations  of  Literature  267 

when  their  voices  are,  as  mere  mechanical  organs, 
more  completely  under  control. 

The  objections  to  the  association  of  drill  in 
writing,  in  spelling,  in  grammar,  and  in  compo- 
sitions are  of  like  kind.  It  may  be  granted  that 
there  is  something  in  the  fact  that  literature  repre- 
sents the  most  effective  use  of  language,  and  is,  all 
things  considered,  the  most  interesting  kind  of 
writing.  Still  this  does  not  constitute  a  sufficient 
reason  why  the  burden,  and  in  all  too  many  cases 
the  odium,  of  teaching  these  things  should  attach 
to  literature.  It  is  a  perfidious  breaking  of  the 
promise  of  literature,  or  of  any  art,  which  should 
keep  as  much  as  possible  of  the  atmosphere  of 
play.  Of  course,  drill  in  language  and  in  written 
expression  should  be  attached  to  every  subject  in 
the  elementary  curriculum;  and  this  not  only  for 
the  sake  of  relieving  the  literature  from  a  burden 
of  unattractive  tasks,  but  because  of  the  fact  that 
the  literary  style  and  vocabulary  are  not  good  for 
all  subjects  and  purposes,  and  the  children  should 
not  be  trained  exclusively  in  these.  On  the  large 
scale  of  things,  it  is  a  pity  at  any  stage  of  the 
child's  education  to  identify  "English"  with  liter- 
ature, since  there  is  and  should  be  so  much 
English  that  is  not  literature,  and  so  much  litera- 
ture that  is  not  English. 

One  of  the  pleasantest  and  most  profitable  co- 


268     Literature  in  the  Elementary  School 

operations  of  literature  is  with  the  training  in 
languages  other  than  the  vernacular.  In  those 
elementary  classes  where  the  children  have  in- 
struction in  either  German  or  French — or,  for 
the  matter  of  that,  in  Spanish  or  Italian — every 
effort  should  be  made  in  their  use  of  story  and 
verse  to  secure  the  characteristic  and  universal 
literary  effect.  The  German  lyric  has  all  the 
beauty  of  music  and  of  image  that  the  English 
has;  the  French  fairy-play  has  most  of  elements 
of  dramatic  art  that  the  children  could  use  in 
English  translation. 

A  few  of  the  fallacies  of  correlation,  or  mere 
co-relation,  of  literature  with  other  aspects  of  the 
children's  school  experience  are  these : 

The  fallacy  of  setting  out  to  teach  children  the 
love  of  home,  or  country,  or  nature,  or  animals, 
by  teaching  them  literature  that  expresses  or 
reflects  those  emotions. 

The  love  of  one's  own  country  must  be  in  our 
day  a  thing  of  slow  and  gradual  growth.  Our 
feelings  about  our  country  should  arise  out  of 
our  knowledge  of  the  heroic  things  in  her  history, 
out  of  the  noble  plans  for  her  growth,  out  of  the 
generous  things  she  provides  for  her  children  and 
the  children  of  other  lands.  Out  of  this  or  some 
such  basis  arises  the  emotion  of  patriotism,  a 
poem  or  a  story  which  reflects  this  emotion  has 


Correlations  oj  Literature  269 

some  such  back-ground  by  implication.  To  hunt 
about  for  a  poem  or  story  which  teaches  patriot- 
ism is  a  putting  of  the  cart  before  the  horse. 
First  arouse  in  your  children  the  emotion — an 
original  personal  emotion  of  their  own,  growing 
out  of  the  legitimate  background;  then,  if  per- 
chance you  are  so  fortunate  as  to  find  a  poem  or  a 
story  which  also  reflects  this  emotion,  and  which 
is  at  the  same  time  good  as  art,  you  are  so  much 
the  richer.  The  children  will  find  their  own  feel- 
ing reinforced  and  nobly  expressed,  and  conse- 
quently deepened  and  dignified. 

The  same  thing  is  true  as  to  the  love  of  ani- 
mals. If  the  children  have  the  literature  first, 
or  only  the  literature,  they  may  have  only  a 
second-hand  and  perfunctory  love  of  the  beasts. 
But  first  give  your  grade  a  dog,  or  a  cat,  or  a 
canary ;  or  give  your  child  in  the  country  a  pony, 
or  a  lamb,  or  a  pig;  that  they  may  feel  at  first 
hand  the  throb  of  dramatic  brotherhood,  of 
humorous  kinship,  that  constitutes  love  of  ani- 
mals. Then,  when,  judging  by  the  proper  canons 
that  test  good  literature,  you  find  a  piece  that 
reflects  and  deepens  this,  it  is  so  much  pure  gain. 

The  same  thing  is  true  of  nature.  The  chil- 
dren should  have  many  things  that  reflect  feelings 
about  nature  and  natural  phenomena,  and  that 
give  the  interpretations  which  great  and  gifted 


270    Literature  in  the  Elementary  School 

artists  have  made  of  these  things.  But  one  should 
no  more  go  to  literature  for  creating  first-hand 
love  of  nature  than  he  would  go  to  the  same 
source  for  facts  about  any  specific  phenomenon 
in  nature.  Of  course,  this  is  not  saying  that  we 
demand  that  a  child  shall  have  had  a  previous 
experience  of  every  image  and  phenomenon  of 
nature  that  is  presented  to  him  in  literature.  In- 
deed, we  expect  literature  to  complement  and  sup- 
plement life  in  the  matter  of  imagery;  to  deepen 
and  to  arouse  experience  in  the  matter  of  emo- 
tion. But  the  fallacy  lies  in  choosing  literature 
on  this  ground,  and  in  depending  upon  literature 
to  create  at  first  hand  what  is,  and  should  be,  an 
extra-literary  feeling.  Now,  from  time  to  time 
there  comes  the  teacher's  way  one  of  those  rare 
chances  when  he  finds  the  time,  the  place,  and  the 
poem  all  together,  as  when  on  some  March  day 
of  thaw  he  can  teach  "The  cock  is  crowing,"  of 
Wordsworth;  on  the  first  morning  of  hoar-frost 
he  can  read  "The  Frost;"  on  another  day,  "The 
Wind" — the  things  that  harmonize  with  the  spirit 
of  an  experience. 

Another  of  the  fallacies  of  correlation  is  the 
determined,  if  not  violent,  association  of  the  work 
in  literature  with  the  festivals.  As  a  matter  of 
fact,  there  is  not  much  more  than  time  in  certain 
schools  to  teach  the  younger  children  the  things 


Correlations  of  Literature  271 

they  are  expected  to  know  about  Thanksgiving, 
Christmas,  Washington's  birthday,  Easter,  June. 
The  work  for  the  next  celebration  begins  just  as 
soon  as  the  foregoing  one  is  past.  The  partition- 
ing of  the  year  into  these  very  emphatic  sections, 
and  the  carrying  of  the  children  through  the  same 
round  year  after  year,  are  questions  too  general 
to  be  treated  here.  But  we  are  interested  in  the 
fact  that  in  most  cases  the  specimens  of  literature 
that  can  be  considered  applicable  to  the  festivals 
would  never  be  chosen  from  out  the  world  of 
things  for  their  absolute  value  as  literature,  nor 
for  their  peculiar  suitability  for  the  children.  So 
it  comes  about  that  the  children — the  younger 
classes,  at  least — spend  as  much  as  two-thirds  of 
their  time  at  second-  or  third-rate  specimens  of 
literature. 

There  is  not  much  reason  for  protesting  in  our 
day  against  that  species  of  correlating  literature 
with  something  else  which  consists  in  teaching 
in  connection  with  this  literature  things  that  the 
children  ought  to  know  later,  regardless  of  their 
immediate  fitness  or  acceptability ;  as  for  example 
the  facts  of  Greek  mythology,  the  characters  and 
plots  of  Shakespeare's  plays;  we  can  never  be 
too  grateful  for  that  interpretation  of  childhood 
and  of  education  which  has  made  this  hereafter 
impossible.  At  the  same  time,  if  we  choose  wisely 


272     Literature  in  the  Elementary  School 

now,  choose  in  the  light  of  our  best  knowledge, 
the  children  will  be  glad  all  their  lives  to  know 
the  things  we  choose  for  them. 

The  connection  of  literature  with  history  is 
a  many-sided  question,  and  is  not  easily  disposed 
of.  As  a  matter  of  fact,  the  partnership  between 
history  and  literature,  so  vaguely  asserted  and  so 
complaisantly  accepted  in  many  quarters,  is  a 
combination  in  which  the  literature  has  usually 
gone  to  the  wall.  Indeed,  the  practical  adjust- 
ment of  history  and  literature  wavers  about  be- 
tween two  equally  fallacious  schemes.  One  of 
these  is  to  give  the  children  the  literature  pro- 
duced by  the  nation  whose  history  they  are  study- 
ing; as  for  example,  the  Homeric  poems  when 
they  study  the  history  of  Greece,  that  they  may 
imbibe  the  true  Greek  spirit  from  the  poems. 
Now,  children  of  elementary  age  cannot  distin- 
guish, or  even  unconsciously  feel,  a  national  spirit 
in  a  poem.  It  is  the  broadly  human,  the  univer- 
sally true,  elements  and  spirit  that  they  feel.  Be- 
sides, the  Greek  national  spirit,  the  spirit  of  the 
characteristic  Greek  period,  was  not  Homeric,  and 
the  literature  of  the  characteristic  Greek  period 
would  never  do  for  the  elementary  children.  In 
the  case  of  Greek  literature  one  cannot  unre- 
servedly demur  because  the  Homeric  poems  are 
never  bad  for  the  children.  But  the  same  prin- 


Correlations  of  Literature  273 

ciple  applied  to  other  nations  and  their  literature 
may  bring  disaster. 

The  other  scheme  for  relating  history  and  liter- 
ature is  to  choose  the  literature  on  the  basis  of 
the  fact  that  it  deals  with  some  person  or  event 
or  period  with  which  the  history  is  concerned; 
as,  when  we  have  a  class  in  the  history  of  the 
Plymouth  colony,  we  give  them  Longfellow's 
"The  Courtship  of  Miles  Standish"  for  litera- 
ture, which,  except  for  one  or  two  picturesque 
scenes,  one  would  never  choose  as  literature  for 
young  children;  and  as,  when  we  study  the 
American  Revolution,  we  give  them  as  literature 
some  mature  and  sentimental  modern  novel,  or 
some  sensational  and  untrustworthy  juvenile, 
choosing  these  merely  because  they  profess  to  in- 
corporate events  connected  with  the  historical 
period. 

The  whole  matter  of  the  historical  romance  is 
important  and  complicated — too  complicated  and 
involving  too  many  critical  principles  to  be 
handled  here.  It  must  be  sufficient  to  say  in  this 
connection  what  is  sufficiently  obvious  to  any 
thoughtful  critic — that  he  who  takes  up  and 
handles  legitimately  and  justly  an  epoch,  an 
event,  or  a  group  of  historical  persons,  and  at  the 
same  time  produces  good  literature,  is  a  master 
and  produces  a  masterpiece — much  too  mature 


274    Literature  in  the  Elementary  School 

and  developed  for  elementary  children.  Only 
Scott  possessed  the  faculty  of  keeping  generally 
in  sight  of  his  history,  or  of  segregating  it  in  an 
occasional  longeur,  and  adding  to  it  a  rattling 
good  story.  But  Scott  is  too  mature  and  complex 
for  elementary  children  up  to  the  very  oldest,  and 
they  are  not  likely  to  be  studying  the  periods  in 
history  that  interested  him. 

No,  the  kinship  between  history  and  litera- 
ture, and  the  co-operations  between  them  in  the 
children's  experience,  are  not  of  this  external  and 
artificial  kind.  It  is  for  the  mature  and  philo- 
sophical student  to  study  literature  as  a  culture 
product — its  relation  to  the  country  and  the  times 
that  produced  it.  It  is  for  much  older  students 
to  read  the  great  romances,  like  Tolstoy's  War 
and  Peace,  that  adequately  mirror  an  epoch  or  an 
epoch-making  event. 

For  the  children  there  is  a  deeper  spiritual 
kinship  between  history  and  literature.  It  has  to 
do  with  the  personal  and  dramatic  side,  the  biog- 
raphy and  adventure  of  history.  It  lies  in  the 
spirit  and  atmosphere  of  human  achievement,  in 
the  identity  of  the  motives  that  express  them- 
selves in  literature  and  in  actual  accomplishment. 
When  we  study  the  pioneer  and  the  colonist — the 
born  and  doomed  colonist — we  find  his  kinsman 
and  prototype  in  Robinson  Crusoe.  When  we 


Correlations  of  Literature  275 

study  the  Revolution,  the  revolt  against  unjust 
laws,  the  protest  of  democracy  against  class- 
oppression,  we  find  the  spirit  of  Robin  Hood. 

I  hasten  to  disclaim  any  intention  of  advising 
these  particular  combinations.  The  examples 
should  merely  serve  to  make  clear  certain  aspects 
of  the  kinship  of  spirit  between  literature  and 
history.  Of  course  one  does  now  and  again,  and 
as  it  were,  by  special  grace,  find  a  story  or  a 
poem — like  the  "Concord  Hymn,"  or  "Marion's 
Men,"  or  "The  Landing  of  the  Pilgrim  Fathers" 
— precisely  apropos  of  his  event  and  beautifully 
adapted  to  his  literary  needs.  And  one  often 
comes  upon  a  historical  document — like  The 
Oregon  Trail  or  The  Autobiography  of  Benja- 
min Franklin — so  picturesque  and  concrete,  so 
observant  of  effects  of  unity  and  harmony,  so 
full  of  appeals  to  the  imagination,  and  so  effective 
in  verbal  expression,  as  to  yield  many  of  the 
effects  of  literature. 

In  spite  of  all  protests  against  forced  and  mis- 
taken associations  of  literature  with  other  subjects 
in  school,  we  must  constantly  insist  that  it  is  no 
isolated  thing,  detached  from  life.  On  the  con- 
trary, literature  arises  out  of  life,  and  is  always 
arising  out  of  it  and  reacting  upon  it.  It  is  effect- 
ive and  practically  operative  in  a  child's  life 
precisely  because  it,  too,  is  life.  It  is  closer. 


276     Literature  in  the  Elementary  School 

therefore,  to  his  business  and  bosom  than  any  item 
or  system  of  knowledge  could  be.  It  is  not  to 
disturb  its  trustworthiness  and  value  to  say  that 
it  does  not  primarily  convey  information  and  can- 
not be  called  upon  to  deliver  facts.  It  does  render 
truth  and  wisdom,  the  summary  and  essence  of 
fact  and  knowledge.  It  does  not  destroy  its  edu- 
cational value  to  say  that  we  shall  search  it  in 
vain  for  a  body  or  a  system  of  organized  disci- 
pline; for,  since  it  is  art,  it  disciplines  while  it 
charms  and  teaches  us  while  it  sets  us  free. 

The  natural  correlations  of  literature  are  with 
the  other  arts,  but,  above  all,  with  the  spirit  of 
childhood,  and  with  the  consciousness  of  chil- 
dren ;  with  the  tone  and  spirit  of  their  other  work, 
rather  than  with  its  actual  subject-matter. 


CHAPTER  XVII 

LITERATURE  OUT  OF  SCHOOL  AND  READING  OTHER 
THAN   LITERATURE 

Were  it  not  for  appearing  captious  or  extrava- 
gant, one  would  like  to  say  that  in  these  days  of 
cheap  and  easy  books,  and  amidst  the  temptations 
of  the  free  libraries,  the  problem  is  that  of  keep- 
ing the  children  from  reading  too  much,  rather 
than  of  inducing  them  to  read  enough.  This  is 
particularly  true  of  children  in  our  large  Ameri- 
can cities,  whom  we  must,  in  our  first  generation 
of  city-dwelling,  guard  against  eye-strain,  and 
nerve-strain,  and  library-air,  and  physical  inac- 
tivity of  all  sorts.  Luckily,  our  generation  has 
learned  some  things  about  the  educational  pro- 
cesses that  have  tended  to  lessen  materially  the 
danger  of  over-reading.  In  many  homes,  and  to 
many  children  out  of  school,  books  and  maga- 
zines have  hitherto  been  a  sort  of  opiate,  from  the 
point  of  view  of  the  child  deadening  the  hungry 
sensibilities  and  lulling  the  stifled  activities;  and 
from  the  point  of  view  of  the  parent  securing 
silence  and  providing  an  apparently  innocuous 
occupation.  This  is  all  too  little  changed  now, 
though  more  and  more  homes  are  providing  op- 
»77 


ayS    Literature  in  the  Elementary  School 

portunity  and  encouragement  for  other  occupa- 
tions: shop  and  studio,  and  more  abundant 
material  and  opportunity  for  play.  In  the  cities 
the  public  playgrounds  and  gymnasiums — and  all 
too  rarely  the  public  workshop  and  studio  for 
children — begin  to  share  with  the  public  library 
the  task  of  safely  taking  care  of  the  children  out 
of  school. 

But  there  will  always  be  time  for  reading, 
and  by  all  means  the  legitimate  share  of  the  chil- 
dren's time  should  be  given  to  it.  The  so-called 
supplementary  reading  given  them  by  the  school 
is  largely,  I  take  it,  a  question  of  the  much  read- 
ing that  will  make  the  process  easier,  and  not  a 
matter  of  accumulating  facts,  or  of  acquiring  a 
wider  knowledge  of  literature.  In  many  schools 
that  I  have  observed  it  is  often  unwisely  and 
carelessly  chosen,  so  far  as  the  literary  share  of  it 
is  concerned.  It  should  be  selected  partly  for  its 
bearing  upon  the  fact-studies,  and  not  wholly 
made  up  of  things  of  the  literary  kind.  The 
bearings  of  the  question  of  the  school's  supple- 
mentary reading  are  not  literary,  or,  so  far  as 
they  are,  they  have  been  discussed  in  other  con- 
nections. 

Every  child  should  ideally  have  free  access  to 
a  collection  of  books  got  together  with  reference 
to  his  needs  and  tastes.  It  may  be  serviceable  to 


Literature  Out  oj  School  279 

indicate  the  kind  and  number  of  books  that  might 
be  included  in  such  a  library  of  a  child  up  to  his 
fourteenth  year. 

There  should  be  in  such  a  collection  several 
biographies.  On  the  whole,  let  them  be  of  the 
older,  idealizing  type,  not  of  the  modern  young 
university  instructor's  virtuously  iconoclastic  type. 
Children  get  at  their  history  first  through  heroic 
and  dramatic  figures  and  events.  In  their  earlier 
years  it  is  the  imagination  that  appropriates  the 
images  and  events  of  history.  It  is  therefore  only 
good  pedagogy  to  present  the  figures  on  their 
heroic  and  ideal  side.  Let  these  biographies  in- 
clude the  record  of  different  sorts  of  men — a 
statesman,  a  pioneer,  a  preacher,  a  soldier,  an 
explorer,  an  inventor,  a  missionary,  a  business 
man,  a  man  of  letters — so  that  many  types  of 
character  and  kinds  of  experience  may  be 
reflected. 

As  the  children  grow  older,  they  will  dip  into 
history  for  the  images — the  persons  and  de- 
tachable events.  The  search  for  facts  and 
philosophy  will  come  many  years  later.  Some 
tempting  books  of  history  should  appear  on  their 
shelves;  The  Dutch  Republic,  The  Conquest  of 
Mexico,  Parkman's  romantic  narratives,  and  John 
Fiske's;  if  possible  the  illustrated  edition  of 
Green's  History  of  the  English  People.  Most  of 


280    Literature  in  the  Elementary  School 

the  history  they  get  from  their  own  reading,  how- 
ever, should  be  what  they  get  from  the  biogra- 
phies of  the  central  figures  in  the  events — 
Columbus,  William  of  Orange,  Francis  Drake, 
and  all  the  other  picturesque  and  heroic  persons. 
Other  historical  reading  would  best  be  done  under 
guidance  and  in  connection  with  the  work  in 
school. 

There  should  be  a  few  books  of  travel  and 
exploration.  Among  these  there  should  be  some 
of  the  original  sources,  if  possible  the  Bradford 
Journal,  the  Jesuit  Relations,  the  Lewis  and  Clark 
Journals.  Froissart  and  Marco  Polo  should  be 
included;  the  fable-making  travelers  perform  a 
very  useful  function.  To  these  may  be  added  a 
few  most  recent  explorations — African,  Arctic, 
Andean,  Thibetan. 

Children,  barring  the  exceptional  child,  will 
not  read  formal  science;  but  it  may  develop  or 
help  on  a  desirable  taste  and  interest  to  have  some 
of  the  many  pretty  out-door  books  in  their  col- 
lection— not  romances  of  the  wild,  but  simpler 
treatises  about  the  things  to  be  found  in  the  door- 
yard  and  the  home  woodland.  And  when  a  child 
develops  a  taste  or  a  gift  in  any  scientific  direc- 
tion, he  should  have  access,  as  easy  as  possible, 
to  some  good  reference  books  suited  to  his  needs. 
All  children  should  have  access  to  some  of  the 


Literature  Out  of  School  281 

more  popular  technical  and  scientific  journals 
which  give  interesting  accounts  of  current  dis- 
coveries and  inventions. 

By  way  of  nature  and  animal  books  we  will 
include  the  Jungle  Books,  an  expurgated  edition 
of  Reynard  the  Fox,  Aesop's  Fables,  and,  of 
course,  Uncle  Remus.  Other  semi-scientific 
nature-writers  will  doubtless  appear  in  most  col- 
lections of  children's  books — and  may  do  no 
harm. 

A  book  of  Greek  myth  seriously  and  beauti- 
fully told  should  be  accessible.  No  other  myth  is 
so  beautiful  or  so  imaginative,  or  so  artistically 
put  together.  The  children  do  not  need  to  have 
to  do  with  many  myths  until  they  know  something 
about  interpreting  them.  Of  course,  they  should 
have  access  to  the  Bible  in  some  attractive  form. 
A  large  illustrated  edition — Dore's  or  Tissot's — 
will  please  and  instruct  them  from  their  earliest 
days.  This  is  one  of  the  cases  in  which  pictures — 
good  and  imaginative  pictures — form  a  desirable 
gateway  into  a  realm  where  the  children  are  not 
naturally  at  home,  and  where  they  need  the  help  of 
a  great  and  serious  artist  in  finding  their  way.  Of 
course,  poor  and  materialistic  pictures  are  a  mis- 
fortune, especially  those  that  attempt  to  body  forth 
preternatural  events  and  supernatural  beings. 
Dore's  pictures  are  not  undesirable,  because  they 


282     Literature  in  the  Elementary  School 

often  help  a  child  to  a  noble  and  imaginative  con- 
ception of  a  thing  he  is  himself  powerless  to  con- 
struct; while  Tissot's  are  good  because  they  set 
forth  with  beauty  and  richness  of  detail  the  many 
phases  of  life  which  the  child  must  try  to  image 
in  reading  the  Hebrew  stories — from  the  nomadic 
simplicity  of  the  saga  of  pastoral  Abraham  to 
the  luxurious  refinements  of  the  Romanized  and 
cosmopolitan  Jerusalem. 

The  little  scholar  should  find  on  his  shelves 
Lanier's  King  Arthur,  Pyle's  Robin  Hood,  Palm- 
er's Odyssey,  some  translation  of  the  Iliad;  in 
short,  some  form  of  each  of  the  great  hero-tales ; 
a  selected  few  of  Scott's  romances — Ivanhoe, 
Quentin  Durward,  Guy  Mannering,  Anne  of 
Geierstein;  a  few  of  Cooper's;  Robinson  Crusoe, 
Don  Quixote,  William  Morris'  prose  tales,  a  pair 
of  Quiller-Couch's,  and  as  many  of  Joseph  Con- 
rad's ;  these  might  constitute  his  romances.  But 
unless  he  is  a  very  unusual  child,  he  will  never 
read  in  these  masters,  if  he  is  given  masses  of 
cheap  and  easy  reading,  such  as  the  Henty  books 
and  the  Alger  series;  or  if  he  finds  in  his  mother's 
sitting-room  a  stack  of  "the  season's  best  sellers" 
and  the  ten-cent  magazines.  The  cheap  and  easy 
style  and  the  commonplace  material  of  this  sort 
of  books  offer  the  line  of  least  resistance  to  the 
young  reader.  They  flow  into  his  mind  without 


Literature  Out  of  School  283 

effort  on  his  part,  while,  if  he  would  apprehend 
the  masters,  he  must  actively  co-operate  with 
them  at  every  step,  arousing  his  best  powers  to 
comprehend  their  expressions  and  to  grasp  their 
ideas.  One  would  hesitate  to  say  that  there  is 
absolutely  no  use  for  books  of  the  Henty  and 
Alger  type.  One  can  imagine  a  child  whose  every 
bent  was  against  reading,  being  enticed  to  begin 
by  some  such  easy  and  commonplace  experience. 
And  one  can  imagine  their  being  useful  to  wean 
children  away  from  really  vicious  books.  In  a 
certain  boys'  club  I  know,  organized  in  a  social 
settlement,  which  was  really  a  reorganization  of  a 
gang,  these  particular  books  were  for  a  year  or 
so  an  acceptable  substitute  for  the  bloody 
romances  they  had  been  reading.  Many  of  those 
boys  have  never  passed  beyond  them;  but  to 
many  others  they  were,  as  was  hoped,  stepping- 
stones  to  better  things.  There  is  no  place  for 
them  in  the  ideal  collection  of  children's  books. 
Certain  books,  harmless  and  as  recreation  even 
desirable,  will  inevitably  make  their  appearance 
on  the  children's  shelves — Miss  Alcott's,  Mrs. 
Richards',  and  others  of  the  many  series  of  girls' 
books  and  boys'  books;  they  are  doubtless  inno- 
cent enough,  and  to  be  discouraged  only  when 
they  keep  the  children  from  something  better 
worth  while ;  to  be  encouraged,  on  the  other  hand, 


284    Literature  in  the  Elementary  School 

only  for  those  children  who  must  be  tempted  by 
easy  reading  into  any  habit  of  using  books.  To 
be  sure,  you  will  probably  find  that  your  child  has 
found  one  of  them,  perhaps  a  whole  series,  to 
which  for  a  certain  period  she  seems  to  have 
given  her  whole  heart;  but  if  treated  with  wis- 
dom this  symptom  will  disappear,  and  you  will 
find  her  at  some  surprisingly  early  day  re-reading 
the  tournament  at  Ashby,  and  patronizingly 
alluding  to  the  time  when  she  was  enslaved  to 
"The  Little  General"  series,  or  the  "Under  the 
Roses"  or  the  "Eight  Half-Sisters"  series,  or  any 
other  particular  juveniles,  as  "when  I  was  a 
child." 

In  the  matter  of  fairy-tales  one  must  discrimi- 
nate and  renounce  quite  resolutely.  It  is  not  good 
for  a  child  who  has  early  mastered  that  edged 
tool  of  reading  to  have  access  to  all  fairy-tales 
and  all  kinds  of  fairy-tales.  Eschew  all  the 
modern  ones.  Of  course,  if  you  have  a  personal 
friend  who  has  written  a  book  of  them,  for 
reasons  other  than  literary  your  children  will 
read  them.  But  as  to  those  you  choose  freely  for 
them  let  them  have  Grimm  and  Perrault,  and  the 
Arabian  Nights,  and  after  a  while  Andersen; 
which,  together  with  what  they  will  pick  up  here 
and  there  in  magazines  and  in  their  friends' 
houses,  will  be  enough. 


Literature  Out  of  School  285 

For  poetry,  the  child  should  have  on  his  own 
shelves  some  pretty  edition  of  the  Nursery 
Rhymes,  The  Child's  Garden,  some  really  good 
collection  of  little  things — The  Posy  Ring,  for 
example,  Henley's  Lyra  Heroica,  Lang's  The  Blue 
Poetry  Book,  Allingham's  Book  of  Ballads.  For 
the  rest  he  should  be  read  to  from  the  poets  them- 
selves, and  as  soon  as  he  is  old  enough,  sent  to 
the  volumes  of  the  poets  for  his  reading.  As  in 
school  so  at  home  the  children  should  hear  their 
poetry  read  until  they  acquire  some  real  degree  of 
expertness  as  readers.  Children  who  can  not 
understand  at  all,  poetry  which  they  read  silently, 
will  delight  in  it  read  aloud. 

This  little  collection  should  contain  the  classic 
nonsense,  but  not  all  kinds  of  inartistic  fooling 
and  rude  fun.  There  should  be  Alice  in  Wonder- 
land and  Through  the  Looking-Glass  (always  the 
one  with  Tenniel's  pictures).  We  must  re- 
member that  Alice  is  very  delicate  art,  and  that 
its  final  and  deepest  appeal  is  to  the  mature  per- 
son. Certain  very  imaginative  children  take  to 
it  as  a  fanciful  tale  at  the  moment  of  ripeness; 
others  miss  it  then,  and  must  wait  until  the  won- 
derful dream-psychology  of  it,  and  the  delicate 
satire  of  its  parodies  can  make  their  appeal  to 
them  as  older  persons.  Lear's  Nonsense  Rhymes 
in  judicious  doses  every  child  should  have;  "John 


286    Literature  in  the  Elementary  School 

Gilpin's  Ride;"  certain  of  the  Bab  Ballads;  a 
little  of  Oliver  Heresford's  delightful  foolishness. 
Among  the  folk-  and  fairy-tales  he  will  find  many 
comic  bits  whose  kind  or  degree  of  humor  will 
suit  him  admirably  in  his  younger  years.  In 
Clouston's  Book  of  Noodles  may  be  found  a 
mine  of  such  funny  tales.  The  Peterkin  Papers 
is  the  best  of  modern  noodle-tales.  No  family 
can  be  brought  up  without  the  help  of  Strewel 
Peter,  nor  should  they  miss  Little  Black  Sambo. 
Most  American  children  are  enchanted  with  the 
fun  of  Tom  Sawyer  and  Huck  Finn  though  one 
must  sadly  acknowledge  that  it  is  woven  into 
back-grounds  of  a  sensational  kind  not  at  all  im- 
proving to  an  unformed  taste. 

One  cannot  feel  that  parodies  are  in  general 
good  for  children;  though,  after  they  have  had 
a  good  share  of  serious  enjoyment  out  of  their 
fairy-tales,  and  especially  if  they  seem  too  much 
or  too  long  absorbed  in  them,  they  ought  to  have 
The  Rose  and  the  Ring  and  Prince  Prigio. 

Picture-books  and  illustrated  books  are  an- 
other independent  little  problem.  It  is  a  curious 
fact  that  it  is  not  the  beautiful  lithographs  of 
birds  and  animals,  flocks  and  landscapes,  children 
in  irreproachable  Russian  dresses  and  short  socks, 
seated  in  the  corner  of  ancestral  mahogany  sofas, 
refreshing  themselves  from  antique  silver  por- 


Literature  Out  oj  School  287 

ringers,  that  the  little  living  heads  hang  over  by 
the  hour  on  the  nursery  floor.  It  is  much  more 
likely  to  be  the  thunderous  landscapes  of  the  old 
Dutch  woodcuts  in  Great-grandmama's  Bible,  the 
queer,  chaotic,  symbolistic  plates  of  the  Mother- 
Play;  the  wonderful  prints  of  Comenius'  Orbis 
Pictus;  the  casualties  of  John  Leech's  hunting 
fields.  True,  they  delight  in  the  charming  details  of 
all  Kate  Greenaway's  books;  and  Walter  Crane's 
pictures  so  rich  in  color  and  beautiful  detail  give 
ceaseless  joy;  but  one  must  confess  that  they  are 
a  bit  inclined  to  "shy"  at  pictures  they  know  to  be 
intended  for  them.  Every  nursery  that  can  com- 
pass it  should  have  as  many  as  possible  of  the 
books  illustrated  in  color  by  Boutet  de  Monvel. 
The  children  should  never  see  comic  illustrations 
of  their  nursery  rhymes  and  stories.  They  are 
all  banal  as  wit  and  trashy  as  art,  substituting  an 
ugly  and  distorted  image  for  the  possibly  beauti- 
ful one  the  child  might  have  made  for  himself. 
After  they  have  passed  out  of  infancy,  they  do 
not  need  pictures  in  their  stories.  The  black- 
and-white  print  is  inadequate  when  color  and 
movement  should  be  a  part  of  the  image,  and 
children  should  have  the  discipline  of  relying  en- 
tirely on  themselves  in  visualizing  the  images  of 
the  text.  There  should  also  be  in  the  "little 
library,"  or  accessible  to  the  little  readers  in  the 


288    Literature  in  the  Elementary  School 

big  one,  beside  the  illustrated  Bible,  the  one  big 
volume  of  Shakespeare  with  Gilbert's  pictures — 
an  inexhaustible  mine  of  life  and  art;  Engelmann 
and  Anderson's  Atlas  of  the  Homeric  Poems,  a 
Dictionary  of  Classical  Antiquities,  and  an  ency- 
clopedia that  the  older  children  can  use,  should 
have  a  place  on  these  shelves. 

It  is  so  often  said  as  to  amount  to  a  mere  con- 
vention that  the  best  possible  literary  experience 
for  a  child  is  to  be  turned  loose  to  browse  (they 
always  say  "browse")  in  a  grown-up  library. 
One  always  finds  a  malicious  pleasure  in  detect- 
ing in  these  people  (and  they  are  always  to  be 
found  in  great  plenty)  those  baby  impressions, 
still  uncorrected  that  they  got  of  many  books 
in  the  course  of  their  browsing.  Of  course,  in 
a  house  where  there  are  many  books  the  chil- 
dren will  experiment,  will  taste  of  many  dishes, 
and  possibly  devour  many  things  not  intended 
for  them.  From  some  of  these  they  will 
take  no  serious  harm,  while  in  many  other  cases 
they  will  get  a  permanent  warp  of  judgment  or  of 
feeling.  It  would  seem  to  me  wise  to  guide  the 
child  in  his  explorations,  giving  him  plenty  of 
those  grown-up  things  that  you  believe  to  be  good 
for  him,  and  heading  him  off  as  long  as  possible 
from  the  others.  For  all  your  caution,  however, 
children  will  be  found  buried  in  Tom  Jones, 


Literature  Out  of  School  289 

mousing  about  in  Montaigne,  chuckling  over 
Tristram  Shandy,  and  befuddling  themselves  with 
Ghosts  and  Anna  Karenina.  In  these  cases  we 
can  only  hope  that  nature  has  mercifully  ordained 
that,  not  having  the  necessary  apperception  ex- 
perience, they  will  not  get  at  the  real  truth  of 
these  books,  and  that  they  will  have  the  luck — 
rare,  to  be  sure — to  remove  and  correct  their  mis- 
taken impressions  in  some  subsequent  reading. 

The  ideal  co-operation  between  home,  school, 
Sunday  school,  and  library  is  yet  to  be  brought 
about;  teacher  and  parents  can  do  much  to  pro- 
mote it.  As  a  step  toward  this  co-operation  they 
should  provide  every  child  who  reads  in  a  library 
with  a  list  of  books.  The  imaginative  books  in 
the  list  given  out  by  the  public  libraries  are  practi- 
cally all  juveniles,  apparently  chosen  mainly  for 
the  purpose  of  amusing  children  who  have  no 
books  in  their  homes.  These  things  are  un- 
doubtedly amusing;  they  are  superficially  appe- 
tizing ;  and  they  have  the  same  effect  that  the  soda 
fountain  at  the  corner  drug-shop  has  upon  the 
children's  appetite  for  true  nourishment — they 
take  the  edge  off  his  hunger  so  that  he  has  no 
relish  for  his  bread  and  butter,  though  he  has  had 
nothing  to  eat  but  a  hint  of  cheap  flavor,  a  dash 
of  formaldehyde,  a  spoonful  of  poor  milk,  and  a 
glassful  of  effervescence.  The  lists  given  by 


290    Literature  in  the  Elementary  School 

parents  arm  J^achers  may^ehange  all  this,  but  only 
if  they  include  goo^-fhings,  beautiful  and  inter- 
esting enoughxto  make  these  wasteful  juveniles 
Seem  unaifcfactive. 

schoolroom  in  which  the  children  are 
enough  to  be  interested,  and  every  family 
should  devise  a  method  of  digesting  the  news  of 
the  world  every  day  or  every  week,  so  that  the 
children  may  have  some  knowledge  of  current 
events.  Of  course,  there  are  children  who  can- 
not be  kept  from  reading  the  morning  paper — 
crimes,  sports,  and  all.  Such  a  child's  family 
should  choose  its  newspaper  with  all  possible  care. 
Every  self-respecting  family  where  there  are  chil- 
dren should  be  willing  to  submit  to  the  very 
small  sacrifice  of  foregoing  the  Sunday  paper, 
to  save  the  little  people  from  the  flood  of  com- 
monplace, of  triviality,  and  of  ribaldry  that  over- 
whelms them  from  these  monstrous  productions. 

Perhaps  no  well-brought-up  child  would  be 
quite  well  equipped  if  he  has  not  had  The  Youth's 
Companion  and  St.  Nicholas  in  his  childhood; 
but  it  is  a  mistake  to  let  them  linger  too  long  in 
these  periodicals,  whose  contents  are  somewhat 
fragmentary  as  literature,  and  not  quite  large 
enough  or  full  enough  as  to  current  events  and 
interests.  It  is  wise  to  turn  the  children  as  soon 
as  possible  to  the  mature  and  more  thorough 


Elementary  School  Course  293 

suggest  things  that  go  well  together.  I  have  even 
ventured  to  hope  that  those  who  read  the  book 
will  also  take  the  pains  to  read  all  the  specimens 
mentioned  in  the  programme,  so  as  to  catch  their 
spirit  and  atmosphere,  and  after  that  choose  quite 
freely  for  themselves  these  or  other  titles.  The 
field  of  choice  is  especially  wide  among  the  folk- 
tales; all  those  mentioned  are  good,  and  suitable 
for  the  places  in  which  they  are  put.  But  there 
are  others  good  and  suitable,  which  may,  indeed, 
better  satisfy  the  needs  of  some  special  teacher 
or  class.  In  some  schools,  no  doubt,  it  will  be 
well  to  give  a  third  year  of  folk-tales  and  simple 
lyrics  before  beginning  the  hero-tales.  In  that 
case  the  whole  course  would  be  pushed  along  a 
year,  making  for  the  last  or  eighth  year  a  combi- 
nation of  bits  taken  from  the  seventh  and  eighth 
years  suggested  here.  The  course  is  planned  for 
a  school  whose  children  go  on  into  high  school; 
though  one  can  see  little  reason  for  a  different 
course  in  literature  for  those  children  who  stop 
with  a  grammar-school  education.  What  we 
covet  for  such  children  is  not  knowledge  of  much 
literature,  nor  knowledge  of  any  literature  in  par- 
ticular, but  a  taste  for  wholesome  books  and 
some  trustworthy  habits  of  reading.  These 
results  are  best  secured  when  a  few  suitable  and 
beautiful  things  have  been  lovingly  taught 


294    Literature  in  the  Elementary  School 

and  joyfully  apprehended.  Children  thus  pro- 
vided will  keep  on  reading ;  if  they  have  been  really 
fed  on  Julius  Caesar  or  The  Tempest  they  will 
hunger  for  more  Shakespeare;  if  they  have  taken 
delight  in  Treasure  Island  they  will  pursue 
Stevenson  and  find  Scott  and  Cooper.  The 
chances  for  implanting  in  them  some  living  and 
abiding  love  of  books  are  much  better  if  we  teach 
them  in  school  the  things  they  may  easily  master 
and  completely  contain,  than  if  we  try  to  supply 
them  with  what  only  an  adult  reader  can  expect 
to  appropriate,  which  therefore  takes  on  the 
character  of  a  task,  or  remains  in  their  minds  a 
mere  chaotic  mass. 

The  plan  of  the  course  is  simple  and  obvious 
enough.  Indeed,  the  main  idea  is  first  of  all 
merely  that  of  putting  into  each  year  such  things 
as  will  delight  and  train  a  child  of  that  age  in  liter- 
ary ways.  With  this  is  joined  the  equally  simple 
and  reasonable  purpose  of  giving  in  each  year  an 
acceptable  variety  looking  toward  the  develop- 
ment of  a  generous  taste — a  story,  a  heroic  poem, 
a  musical  lyric  or  two,  a  bit  of  fun,  a  group  of 
fables.  Throughput  the  programme  there  has 
been  a  conscious  attempt  to  use  things  every 
teacher  knows  or  may  very  easily  find,  and  of 
associating  things  that  harmonize  in  spirit. 

For  the  first  two  years  the  folk-tales  form  the 


295 

core  of  the  course.  To  the  folk-tales  is  joined 
a  group  of  simple  lyrics,  many  of  them  the  more 
formal  and  expressive  of  the  traditionary  rhymes. 
As  a  matter  of  course,  in  a  school  where  these 
first-  and  second-year  children  have  not  already 
had  in  kindergarten  or  in  the  home  nursery  the 
simpler  rhymes  and  jingles — "Little  Boy  Blue," 
"Jack  Horner,"  "There  Was  a  Man  in  Our 
Town" — they  should  be  taught. 

In  the  third  year  Robinson  Crusoe  constitutes 
the  large  core.  As  suggested  in  another  chapter 
it  is  well  to  treat  this  story  as  if  it  were  a  cycle, 
taking  it  in  episodes,  and  interweaving  with  it 
other  bits  of  literature  which  harmonize  with  it, 
either  reinforcing  it  or  counteracting  it.  It  may 
easily  happen  that  a  teacher  would  select  a  quite 
different  group  of  poems  for  study  along  with 
Robinson  Crusoe,  according  as  he  emphasized 
some  other  aspect  of  the  story  and  according  to 
the  maturity  of  his  children.  This  programme 
assumes  a  pretty  mature  third-year  group.  It 
may  be  in  many  schools  well  to  transfer,  as  I  have 
suggested,  this  whole  arrangment  to  the  fourth 
year. 

The  fifth-  and  sixth-year  work  is  arranged 
upon  a  similar  plan — that  of  constituting  a  story 
or  a  story-cycle  the  center  of  the  work,  and  asso- 
ciating with  it  shorter  and  supplementary  bits. 


296    Literature  in  the  Elementary  School 

While  the  poems  in  both  cases  are  such  as 
harmonize  in  subject  or  idea  with  aspects  of  the 
two  stories  that  will  inevitably  appear  in  the 
teaching,  they  have  not  been  chosen  solely  from 
that  point  of  view;  they  are  also  in  every  case 
beautiful  as  detached  poems,  and  ideally,  at 
least,  suitable  for  the  children.  Every  experi- 
enced teacher  will  have  other  verses  and  stories 
in  mind  which  may  be  added  to  those  given  or 
substituted  for  them.  Some  of  them  will  be  use- 
ful, not  as  class  studies  necessarily,  but  as  a  part 
of  that  "reserve  stock"  that  every  teacher  has, 
from  which  he  draws  from  time  to  time  some- 
thing to  read  to  his  class  which  they  are  not 
expecting. 

In  the  programme  for  the  sixth  year  an  alterna- 
tive is  suggested.  Many  teachers  will  find  enough 
in  the  Arthur  stories  to  form  the  core  of  the 
literature  for  the  year.  Others  will  find  material 
for  the  whole  year's  stories  in  the  Norwegian  and 
Icelandic  sagas.  Many  will  not  like  the  sugges- 
tion of  giving  the  antidote  of  the  chivalric 
romances — Don  Quixote.  Many  will  prefer  to 
drop  hero-tales  and  romances  in  favor  of  more 
modern  stories.  Such  a  group  of  stories  is  sug- 
gested introducing  the  stories  that  call  for  r 
interpretation,  and  the  apprehending  of  a  second- 
ary meaning.  This  paves  the  way  for  the  stories 


Elementary  School  Course  297 

of  the  seventh  year  which  call  for  some  genuine 
literary  interpretation.  In  the  seventh  year  pro- 
gramme the  two  dramatic  bits  of  Yeats's  are 
suggested,  not  only  because  they  are  charming 
in  themselves,  and  are  in  charming  artistic  con- 
trast, but  because  they  can  easily  be  staged  and 
acted,  and  are  full  of  suggestion  of  the  kind  of 
thing  the  children  can  do  themselves.  The  Pot 
of  Broth  is  the  dramatization  of  a  well-known 
folk-droll,  and  The  Hour-Glass  is  a  morality 
calling  for  no  complexity  of  dialogue,  of  staging, 
or  of  dramatic  motive — the  kind  of  play  the  chil- 
dren can  most  easily  produce  both  as  literature 
and  as  acting. 

As  suggested  in  a  previous  chapter,  during 
this  and  the  following  year  each  child  should  be 
encouraged  or  required  to  learn  a  poem  or  a  story 
of  his  own  choosing,  which  he  presents  to  the 
class.  This  will  greatly  enrich  the  class  pro- 
gramme. Only  one  fable  is  suggested — one  of 
Fontaine's,  the  interpretation  or  moral  of  which 
should  now  be  given  by  the  class;  many  other 
fables  may  be  used  in  the  same  way,  if  this  exer- 
cise seems  to  be  profitable. 

As  very  observer  of  schools  knows,  it  is  the 
eighth-year  children  who  need  most  accommoda- 
tion and  understanding.  The  programme  offered 
is  designed  for  the  normal  class  in  the  average 


298    Literature  in  the  Elementary  School 

school — when  the  children  are  really  passing  into 
the  secondary  stage  and  should  be  preparing  to  go 
into  high  school  without  crossing  a  chasm.  But 
it  may  need  much  modification  for  those  eighth- 
year  classes  in  which  there  are  belated  children 
and  unevenly  developed  children.  It  is  quite 
possible  that  Julius  Caesar,  The  Tempest,  and 
Sohrab  and  Rustum  may  prove  impracticable 
for  such  a  class,  and  that  something  easier  would 
have  to  be  substituted.  In  no  case  can  we  hope 
to  teach  the  two  plays  exhaustively,  either  as 
regards  their  form  or  their  content.  But  both 
these  plays  are  of  that  kind  of  great  art  that  has 
many  levels  to  which  one  may  climb  in  turn,  with 
his  growing  maturity.  And  the  beauty  of  both 
these  plays  is  that  in  case  the  class  is  precocious 
and  does  inquire  deeply  into  them,  there  is  nothing 
in  the  political  philosophy  of  Julius  Caesar 
or  in  the  spiritual  and  social  philosophy  of  The 
Tempest  that  may  not  be  safely  explained  to 
them.  This  programme  makes  no  mention,  as 
may  be  seen,  of  the  many  minor  lyrics  and  bits 
of  drama  and  story  that  will  be  added  from  many 
sources  and  in  many  connections:  from  their 
home  reading;  from  the  teacher's  reserve  stock; 
from  their  reading  lessons;  from  their  work  in 
other  languages ;  from  their  preparation  for  festi- 
vals and  celebrations;  from  suggestions  of 


Elementary  School  Course  299 

weather  and  season;  from  occasional  current 
periodicals,  and  possibly  from  other  sources. 

And  when  all  is  said,  one  must  say  again  that 
there  cannot  be  a  strictly  normalized  and  fixed 
curriculum  in  literature  since  in  this  subject  more 
than  in  any  other  the  personnel  of  the  class  must 
be  considered ;  their  typical  inheritance,  their  tra- 
dition, their  social  grade,  their  community,  their 
other  interests,  their  passing  preoccupation  and 
almost  their  daily  mood,  are  factors  in  the  prob- 
lem. The  teacher  who  is  sensitive  to  these  mat- 
ters in  his  class  will  soon  emancipate  himself 
from  the  fixed  curriculum.  Let  him  at  the  same 
time  be  sensitive  to  the  emphasis  and  appeal  of 
each  bit  of  art  he  chooses  for  them,  and  he  can- 
not fail.  Whatever  his  results  they  will  be  good. 

After  so  long  a  preamble  follows  the  list  of 
specimens : 

FIRST  YEAK 

Sagas:    "How  Arthur  Drew  the  Sword  from  the  Stone." 
"How  Arthur  Got  the  Sword  Excalibur." 

Marchen:    Briar-Rose,  Grimm. 

Snow-white  and  Rose-red,  Grimm. 
The  Elves  and  the  Shoemaker,  Grimm. 
The  Musicians  of  Bremen,  Grimm. 

Drolls:    Simple  Simon. 
The  Johnny-cakt. 


300    Literature  in  the  Elementary  School 

Accumulative  Tales:    "The  Old  Woman  Who  Found  the 
Sixpence." 

Henny-Penny. 

The  Little  Red  Hen. 
Fables:    "The  Crow  and  the  Pitcher." 

"The  Hare  and  the  Tortoise." 
Verses:    "I  Saw  a  Ship  a-Sailing." 

"Sing  a  Song  of  Sixpence." 

"There  Was  a  Little  Guinea-pig." 

"Tom,  Tom,  the  Piper's  Son." 

"Birdie,  with  the  Yellow  Bill,"  Stevensoa 

"My  Shadow." — Stevenson. 

SECOND  YEAK 
Sagas :    "Siegfried  Gets  the  Sword  from  Mimi." 

"Siegfried  and  the  Dragon." 

"Siegfried  Rescues  Brunhild." 

Marchen:     Cinderella,    or    the    Little    Glass    Slipper. — 
Perrault. 

"Aladdin  and  the  Wonderful  Lamp,"  in  Arabian 
Nights. 

"The    Fisherman    and    the    Genie,"    in    Arabian 
Nights. 

Beauty  and  the  Beast. — Madame  de  Beaumont 

The  Poor  Little  Turkey  Girl. — Gushing. 
Drolls:    Hans  in  Luck. — Grimm. 

Kluge  Else. — Grimm. 

Chapters  from  The  Peterkin  Papers. — Hale. 

Little  Black  Sambo. — Bannerman. 

The  Gray  Goose. — Pearson. 
Accumulative  Tales:  The  Three  Billy-goats  Gruff,  Norwegian. 

Munachar  and  Manachar,  Irish. 

Titty-mouse  and  Tatty-mouse. 


Elementary  School  Course  301 

Fables:    "The  Town  Mouse  and  the  Field  Mouse." 

"The  Stork  and  the  Log." 

"The  Fox  and  the  Crow." 
Verses :    "Three  Children  Sliding  on  the  Ice." 

"Four  Brothers  Over  the  Sea." 

"The  Fairies,"  Allingham. 

"Little  Gustava,"  Celia  Thaxter. 

"Singing,"  Stevenson. 

"Little  Indian,  Sioux  or  Crow,"  Stevenson. 

"The  Wind,"  Stevenson. 

"My  Ship,"  Stevenson. 

"The  Lamb,"  Blake. 

"Piping  Down  the  Valleys  Wild,"  Blake. 

"The  Pied  Piper  of  Hamelin,"  Browning. 

"The  Mountain  and  the  Squirrel,"  Emerson. 

THIRD  YEAK 
Robinson  Crusoe. 
Sinbad  the  Sailor. 
Toomai  of  the  Elephants. — Kipling. 
Rikki-Tikki-Tavi—  Kipling. 
Reynard  the  Fox.    (Selected  stories.) 
"Uncle  Remus."     (Selected  stories.) 
"The  Landing  of  the  Pilgrim  Fathers  in  New  England," 

Mrs.  Hemans. 

"Columbus,"  Joaquin  Miller. 
The  Twenty-third  Psalm.  Authorized  Version. 
"The  Idle  Shepherd  Boys,"  Wordsworth. 
"Spinning  Song,"  Wordsworth. 
"The  Village  Blacksmith,"  Longfellow. 
"Tubal  Cain,"  Mackay. 
"The  Wreck  of  the  Hesperus,"  Longfellow. 
"The  Discoverer  of  the  North  Cape,"  Longfellow. 


302     Literature  in  the  Elementary  School 

"The  Spider  and  the  Fly,"  Mary  Howitt. 
"The  Palm  Tree,"  Whittier. 
"Hiawatha  Builds  His  Canoe,"  Longfellow. 
Dramatization  of  a  story  of    a  voyager  or  pioneer. 

FOURTH  YEAR 

Robin   Hood    (given   partly    from    Howard    Pyle's    Robin 

Hood,  partly  from  the  Ballads). 
"Under  the  Greenwood  Tree,"  Shakespeare. 
"Blow,  Blow,  Thou  Winter  Wind,"  Shakespeare. 
"Waken,  Lords  and  Ladies  Gay,"  Scott 
"Meg  Merriles,"  Keats. 
"The  Chough  and  the  Crow."  Baillie. 
"Song  of  Marion's  Men."  Bryant. 
"My  Captain,"  Whitman. 
"Lochinvar,"   Scott. 

"The  Shepherd  of  King  Admetus,"  Lowell. 
"Abou  Ben  Ahdem,"  Hunt 
"Yussouf,"  Lowell. 
"Sherwood,"  Alfred  Noyes. 
"March,"  Wordsworth. 

"When  Icicles  Hang  by  the  Wall,"  Shakespeare. 
"The  Jabberwocky,"  Alice  in  Wonderland. 

FIFTH  YEAR 

The  Odyssey. — George  Herbert  Palmer.     (Translation.) 

Gulliver's  Travels:  "The  Voyage  to  Lilliput." 

"The  White  Seal,"  Kipling. 

"The  Coast-wise  Lights,"  Kipling. 

"The  Sea,"  Barry  Cornwall. 

"Sir  Patrick  Spens,"  Folk  Ballad. 

"The  Inchcape  Rock,"  Southey. 

"To  a  Waterfowl,"  Bryant. 


Elementary  School  Course  303 

"Lead,  Kindly  Light,"  Newman. 
"The  Chambered  Nautilus,"  Holmes. 
"The  Lake  Isle  of  Innisfree,"  Yeats. 
"Breathes  There  a  Man,"  Scott 
"Uphill,"  Christina  Rossetti. 
"The  Long  White  Seam,"  Jean  Ingelow. 
"The  Exile  of  Erin,"  Campbell. 

SIXTH  YEAR 

Heroic    adventures    from    the    chivalric    cycles    of    King 
Arthur,  of   Siegfried,  of  Roland,  and  The  Cid,  and 
selected  episodes  from  Don  Quixote. 
or 

The  Drums  of  the  Fore  and  Aft.— Kipling :  Rip  Van 
Winkle. — Irving;  The  Bee-Man  of  Orn. — Stockton; 
Old  Pipes  and  the  Dryad. — Stockton;  The  Man  Born 
to  Be  King. — Morris. 

"The  Lady  of  Shalott,"  Tennyson. 

"Hack  and  Hew,"  Bliss  Carman. 

"The  Song  of  the  Chattahoochee,"  Lanier. 

"The  Cloud,"  Shelly. 

"The  Walrus  and  the  Carpenter,"  from  Alice  in  Won- 
derland. 

SEVENTH  YEAR 

The  Great  Stone  Face. — Hawthorne. 

The  Snow  Image. — Hawthorne. 

The  Gold  Bug.—Poc. 

The  Pot  of  Broth.— Yeats. 

The  Hour-Glass. — Yeats. 

"A  Dissertation  on  Roast  Pig,"  Lamb. 

"The  Vision  of  Mirza,"  Addison. 

"King  Robert  of  Sicily,"  Longfellow. 


304    Literature  in  the  Elementary  School 

"Horatius  at  the  Bridge,"  Macaulay. 
"The  Ballad  of  East  and  West,"  Kipling. 
"Heroes,"  Edna   Dean   Proctor. 
"The  Yarn  of  the  Nancy  Bell,"  Gilbert 
"The  Wolf  and  the  Mastiff,"  Fontaine. 

EIGHTH  YEAB 

Julius  Caesar. — Shakespeare. 

The  Tempest. — Shakespeare. 

Sohrab  and  Rustum. — Arnold. 

Treasure  Island. — Stevenson. 

"Old  China,"  Charles  Lamb. 

Wake  Robin  (selections). — John  Burroughs. 

"My  Garden  Acquaintance,"  Warner. 

"The  Goblin  Market,"  Christina  Rossetti. 

"Each  and  All,"  Emerson. 

"Hart-leap  Well,"  Wordsworth. 

"I  Wandered  Lonely  as  a  Cloud,"  Wordsworth. 

"The  Splendor  Falls,"  Tennyson. 

"The  Revenge,"  Tennyson. 

"Etin  the  Forester,"  Folk  Ballad. 

"Thomas  Rymer,"  Folk  Ballad. 

Anyone  who  has  read  these  eighteen  chapters 
should  find  himself  provided  with  a  set  of  max- 
ims and  injunctions  among  which  will  be  the 
following : 

1.  Choose  the  literature  for  the  children  under 
the  guidance  of  those  principles  by  which  you 
test  any  literature. 

2.  Remember  that  literature  is  art;  it  must 


Elementary  School  Course  305 

be  taught  as  art,  and  the  result  should  be  an 
artistic  one. 

3.  Never  teach  a  thing  you  do  not  love  and 
admire.     But  learn  to  suspect  that  when  you  do 
not  love  it  the  fault  is  in  you,  and  is  curable. 

4.  According  to  the  best  light  you  have,  choose 
those  things  that  are  fitted  for  the  children — 
corresponding  to  their  experience,  or  awakening 
in  them  experiences  you  would  like  them  to  have. 

5.  Teach  your  chosen  bit  of  literature  accord- 
ing to  its  nature  and  genius.    Study  it  so  sympa- 
thetically that  you  can  follow  its  hints,  and  make 
its  emphases.    Teach  each  piece  for  its  character- 
istic effect,  and  do  not  try  to  teach  everything  in 
any  one  piece. 

6.  Be  contented  to  read  with  the  children  a 
limited  number  of  things.    You  cannot  read  every 
delightful  and  helpful  thing.    You  can  only  intro- 
duce them  to  literature  and  teach  them  to  love  it. 

7.  When  you  have  led  your  class,  or  half  your 
class;  into  a  vital  and  personal  love  of  literature 
and  set  their  feet  on  the  long  path  of  the  reader's 
joy,    you    have    done    them    the    best    service 
you  can  perform  as  a  teacher  of  literature. 

FINIS 


3  * 


THE  LIBRARY 
UNIVERSITY  OF  CALIFORNIA 

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THIS  BOOK  IS  DUE  ON  THE  LAST  DATE 
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